Microsoft News Tracker

Joanne Bradford who is Microsoft’s current MSN honcho and former Microsoft Web ad czar (”We love ad salesmen“) is leaving Microsoft for startup Spot Runner which is nominally an “Internet-based ad agency that makes it easy and affordable for local businesses to advertise on TV.” The trick apparently is to have canned creative content that can be easily modified for a local business. Bradford reportedly will be executive vice president of National Marketing Services, focused on national advertisers” which sounds like a good fit for her and apparently also fits somewhere in Spot Runner’s business model.

As for MSN, former Bradford direct report Greg Nelson, who is the general manager of MSN.com International, will be running things on an interim basis. I would chalk this up as yet more turmoil in Microsoft’s online business  - the departure of Bradford’s boss Steve Berkowitz was announced in February. Of course, we’ll really see turmoil if the Yahoo deal goes through and Bradford may well have been dodging exactly that.

It’s a bit of a yawner, but Microsoft has apparently confirmed that Windows 7 will be available in 2010 barring unforeseen quality issues:

Officially, the Redmond company has only been saying that Windows 7 development would take an estimated three-year timeframe. However, Microsoft always failed to specify the moment when the three-year timeframe started.
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Well, this is no longer the case. Microsoft explained that it would deliver Windows 7 three years after the consumers launch of Vista. “We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release,” a Microsoft spokesperson revealed to Softpedia via email.
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In this regard, Microsoft has merely reconfirmed what it has in fact said since mid 2007, that Windows 7 is planned for 2010.

Windows 7 seems to be a just a tune up of Vista, but I’m still a bit surprised that anyone is doing much public talking about it at this stage given the sad history of Vista.