'Microsoft sucks' says former MSFT evangelist

For those of you who want to believe that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has turned over a new leaf and left its monopolizing ways behind, I've got bad news. According to Robert Scoble, who was once Microsoft's "chief evangelizer," the company continues to display its signature combination of excess aggression and poor programming execution. Scoble recently used some choice words to describe the hulking giant, which is apparently no longer on his Christmas card list.

Responding to Steve Ballmer's recent claim that Windows Live would defeat all competitors -- including and especially Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) -- at Internet search and other online services, Scoble was quoted in the British newspaper The Sunday Times as saying, "The words are empty . . . Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on the whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks. If that's 'in it to win', then I don't get it."

Scoble writes a blog called Scobleizer. From 2003 to 2006, he was a "technology evangelist" at Microsoft. His job was to make people like the Big Softy, and some say that he was successful. His Wikipedia entry, quoting The Economist, states that while he worked at Microsoft, he convinced some people that Microsoft was "less evil." Quite a challenge, I know, but he seems to have pulled it off, at least for a little while.

But since leaving the company, he has lost his allegiance to the software giant. He now seems to believe that Microsoft's claims to be a better company are little more than hot air. Scoble's latest message to his former employer makes that clear in no uncertain terms: "Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative." Somehow I doubt that Steve Ballmer is listening.