14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Evangelist Vic Gundotra has left the Redmond company after 15 years to join Google.
His transition adds another Microsoft executive to the line of those that have already parted ways with the company, after blogger and personal prot?g? Robert Scoble left for PodTech Network, and after Martin Taylor's abrupt departure from his position as marketing vice president for Windows Live Services. Although he hasn't wrote a single code line in his 15 years at Microsoft, Gundotra's role, that of technological 'evangelist', was regarded as superior even to marketing tasks. His main duty was to convince independent software companies to use Microsoft's solutions as platform for the applications they were developing.
"Mr. Gundotra has resigned from Microsoft and entered into an agreement with Google," said Google spokesman Steve Langdon. "He will not be a Google employee for one year and intends to spend that time on philanthropic pursuits. We are uncertain what precise role he will play when he begins working for Google, but he has a broad range of skills and experience which we believe will be valuable to Google."
Microsoft's representatives confirmed Vic Gundotra's departure but also reveled that he is under a contract with Microsoft preventing him from working for competitors for one year.
Ironically enough, Gundotra's last task with Microsoft was developing a strategy to counteract Google in the field of Web-based applications.