Jon Skeet has received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award since 2003 for his work and contributions to the C# programming language. Skeet joined Google about a year ago, and recently asked his Google bosses if he could renew his award, which is only given out to around 1,500 developers worldwide, and his Google bosses said no. Skeet wrote on his blog:

It’s with some sadness that I have to announce that as of the start of October, I’m no longer a Microsoft MVP.

As renewal time came round again, I asked my employer whether it was okay for me to renew, and was advised not to do so. As a result, while I enjoyed being awarded as an MVP, I’ve asked not to be considered for renewal this year.

This doesn’t mean I’m turning my back on that side of software development, of course. I’m still going to be an active member of the C# community. I’m still writing the second edition of C# in Depth. I’m still going to post on Stack Overflow. I’m still going to blog here about whatever interesting and wacky topics crop up.

I just won’t be doing so as an MVP.

Thanks to all the friends I’ve made in the MVP community and Microsoft over the last 6 years, and I wish you all the best.

Keep in touch.

Published Thu, Oct 1 2009 6:21 by skeet

Skeet works on Google Sync, and during his 20% other projects time, his bosses are okay with him continuing his C# work, but he just can’t accept the MVP award for it.

Since Skeet works on Google Sync, I have to wonder if that project is written, at least in part, in the C# programming language.

I was reading today about an update to the new Google Documents API on Google groups, and I noticed they have a bit of a spam problem that relies solely on individuals reporting spam. With all the brain power at Google they still can’t easily stamp out spam in comments. Here at NG we eliminated spam from our comments several years ago, but we haven’t yet shared how we did it yet. Stay tuned for that article.

Google Wave was launched on Tuesday, but only 100,000 people were invited to use the service during a limited roll-out. Some of the lucky people who did get a wave invitation can invite others, just like when Gmail began its beta period.

A web site has also been launched as a free marketplace to distribute Google Wave invites, just like happened with Gmail. If you really want a Wave invite, you still have a chance.

The similarities between Gmail and Wave exist because Wave is intended to be a sort of replacement for Email and text messaging, and a whole lot more. One complaint that already surfaced was from blog owners concerned that Wave users can comment on their blog without ever seeing ads, or even visiting their blog. Those same blog owners complain that Google will eventually put ads into the Wave screen to make up for the lost revenue they may experience from Wave users not visiting blogs with Google ads. We’ll see where this goes from here.

Over at Lifehacker they were able to put together some great screen shots of Wave we thought were worth taking a look at. Below we’ve included a short video from the Wave team explaining what Wave is in 10 minutes, and the much longer explanation below that for those who want more detail.

Read More →

Above is a map of the acquisitions and investments Google has made since 2001. Some of the companies you may have never heard of before, or since. (Note: Both images in this article can be clicked to enlarge)

One company of note on the list is AOL. In 2005, as AOL was on a steady free fall of subscriber losses for their Internet access services, Google invested $1 billion. AOL has had one investment after another to stay alive, and is currently owned by Time Warner. The AOL investment appears to have been a total loss.

On March 12, 2009 Tim Armstrong, who quit as Google Senior Vice President, was named Chairman and CEO of AOL, LLC. On May 28, 2009, Time Warner decided to cease operations with AOL, and to spin it off as an independent company once Google’s shares cease at the end of the fiscal year.

AOL took Google’s money, and ran with it as it has with so many other investments over the years to stay alive. Google now has nothing to show for their $1 billion investment. At the time, it seems, the AOL investment may have just been an anti-Microsoft move, and not a smart business move. Google has learned from this bad experience, at least we think so.

As for Microsoft, they’ve invested in Apple, before the big iPod boom, and Facebook, just as their growth exploded.

Just last night I saw in Apple iPhone ad that boasted the App store has an App for everything, and 75,000 iPhone Apps to choose from. Technology moves along so fast that it outpaced that commercial. Apple just announce the other day there are 85,000 Apps available now. Today it could be 95,000.

In the spirit of Apps for everything I present this very appropriate parody commercial. The only thing missing was a tutorial on how to disable the GPS tracking chip in the iPhone.