Regarding the next item down. Here is my monthly (or so) big long rant about Microsoft.
As one of the occasional Scoble arrow shooters, I'm not sure his lack of anonymity has all that much to do with it. I found YOUR blog via Scoble and he has been a good source of links to things both favorable and unfavorable concerning Microsoft. Of course he also posts a lot of dreck, as some of the tools ("BlogThis" being a favorite of mine) make it just too easy to blog a word or two about everything you browse during your day.
The biggest problem I have with his blog is that he occasionally takes on the pretense of being an objective observer of Microsoft products. Let's get this clear: nobody working at Microsoft (after they have gotten a couple paychecks anyway) can be objective about Microsoft products. That lack of objectivity is only amplified by (1) Putting your name on the blog (or website), (2) working in the Microsoft PR or Marketing department, and (3) not having a strong technical (i.e. Programming) background before your time at MS. Scoble has all three working against him.
His message seems to be: "you can trust me, because I post my blog on a non-MS website and I often say bad things about Microsoft. So when I tell you that Virtual Earth or the next version of IE are really great you can take that to the bank!"
I just happen to think that either Scoble is naive or that he thinks most of his readers are. He is basically a journalist by training, and his technical pronouncements should be taken with a large grain of salt (as should much of what we read at CNet etc.) until he has established some credibility. He doesn't have the patience to do this, and furthermore on an occasion or two (that I know of) he has called people who challenge him liars, and even searched for references to articles by someone (on my blog) and posted a comment asking me if I want to publicly support a known liar (when in fact I hadn't even expressed an opinion on the subject). In short, he is not too childish to be a blogger, but probably too childish to be representing Microsoft in that capacity, officially or otherwise. If he REALLY believes everything in his blog it would have been better in fact for him to do so anonymously, but then, I suspect he is in the MS Marketing department as a result of the reputation he built up before becoming an employee. Building that same technorati ranking from scratch would almost certainly be impossible.
But whether Scoble is a good thing or a bad thing for Microsoft isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. The fact is, Microsoft is too big. The best thing that could have happened would have been for the anti-trust case to have caused them to get busted into two or (better yet) more companies. I think it would have been better for MS, its employees, stockholders, and customers. It would not have been better for Bill Gates ego, which I think might be the main reason that it is still in one piece. When IBM went though a similar ordeal they too avoided a forced break-up, but not long after that they began spinning off divisions and diversifying the divisions they had (and they continue to do this) so that they can focus on one or two core areas at a time while letting the less profitable stuff percolate in the background or just selling them when they think nothing more can be done. They in fact divested and diversified far more on their own than the FTC would have had them do. There is no ego involved when they decided that the printer business wasn't profitable enough, or more recently the PC hardware business. Microsoft, in fact, owes its existence to IBM's willingness to "just let go" in some areas, and while I would quibble that they let too much of the PC industry go too soon, and should have never trusted Microsoft with OS/2, the fact is that the world is a better place for the "IBM PC" and IBM's contributions to computing continue to benefit mankind (speaking particularly of their research work) in ways not nearly matched by Microsoft.
I know the thrust of your blog is that Microsoft can be fixed by making some adjustments here or there. I have my doubts. As a former customer, I don't like what Microsoft has become. I didn't like the monolithic AT&T either, but I'm pretty happy with Verizon. I think there are some good parts of Microsoft yearning to be free, so to speak. The company needs to get beyond being the creation of Bill Gates, and I dare to say, Bill Gates would be better off being a very wealthy stock holder, but being as much interested in his other stock holdings as he is in "his baby". As of now, I think MS has a far larger chance of following the flight path of DEC, who's founder stayed with it almost to the end than IBM, that managed to survive its founders and become true corporation rather than personal empire.
In the future, America's products are going to go head to head with products from all over the world. Microsoft can no more dominate the world market for software than Boeing (a company I continue to have great respect for) can dominate the market for airliners. Both companies can remain big players, or maybe even the biggest player, but right now, our kids stand in danger of becoming dumbed down end-users while Microsoft continues to milk the domestic market and at the same time farming out the programming to kids with formal computer science training in other countries. I'm not happy about that. I'll keep complaining until it changes.
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