Microsoft's Talent Defections Indicate the Outlook for MrSofty

Kim Peterson of The Seattle Times reports on the defection of the reknowned Kau-Fu Lee from Microsoft's search business in Beijing. Insult is added to injury that Mr Lee -- who is well-known across the industry for his work at Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft on speech recognition -- is moving over to Google; and Microsoft is suing both Mr Lee and his new employer, indicating the level of pain in Redmond over the shift.

Ms Peterson reports other defections have occurred:

"Other defectors to Google include Mark Lucovsky, founding member of the team that created Windows NT; and Joe Beda, who previously worked on a team developing Microsoft's next operating system. Adam Bosworth, a software pioneer at Microsoft, left to start his own company but moved to Google last year. Still others who have held lower-ranking positions at Microsoft are also at Google."

This reflects Google's attractive, exciting and innovative culture as much as Google's distant lead -- which seems to continue to widen -- in search and other Web Services. Moreover, the talent exodus is a direct reflection that Microsoft stock (NASDAQ-MSFT) is perceived internally to be headed nowhere fast, and will likely bottom out in the single digits within months after competition in the OS and office suite segments starts to erode earnings and the Deferred Revenue asset account.

OpenOffice2 will be released to the public in the next few weeks. OpenOffice has evolved. Have you?

Let the hemorrhage begin!