Microsoft News Tracker

Owen Thomas at Business 2.0:

Vic Gundotra, a general manager for platform evangelism at Microsoft and a 15-year employee, has agreed to join Google after first spending a year working on charitable endeavors, Business 2.0 has learned.

“Mr. Gundotra has resigned from Microsoft and entered into an agreement with Google,” Google spokesman Steve Langdon wrote in an emailed statement. “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 spokesman Tom Pilla confirmed Gundotra’s departure and says that the executive has a noncompete agreement with Microsoft preventing him from working for a competitor for one year after leaving the company.

Gundotra had been charged with getting developers to write programs that build on top of Microsoft’s desktop software and online services. Most recently he had been working out a strategy to compete with the draw of Google’s newer, Web-based software applications.

Niall Kennedy and Robert Scoble elaborate on Gundotra’s work at Microsoft. If you can’t beat them, joining them is a good option.

Meanwhile at Mini-Microsoft, the public weblog that attracts a good deal of anonymous internal Microsoft “water cooler chatter,” there are rumors of further executive changes plus Microsoft Reductions in Force (RIF).