microsoft, software development

Charlie Kindel leaving Microsoft

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Charlie Kindel, Windows Phone 7 developer champion at Microsoft, is leaving to start a new company, though he is vague about exactly what it will be:

Charlie will be staying in the Seattle area building a new tech company. The new company will be in stealth mode initially but involves advertising, mobile, cloud computing, and youth athletics.

says the press release.

He goes back a long way at Microsoft, 21 years to be precise. Among the accomplishments he claims:

  • Built ActiveX and DCOM
  • Shipped Internet Explorer 3.0
  • Drove the development of the home networking features in Windows XP
  • Founded eHome and shipped the first version of Windows Media Center
  • Drove the invention of Windows Smart Displays and Windows Media Center Extenders
  • Was the driving force behind Windows Home Server.

I remember IE 3.0 coming out. Surprising though it may seem today, it was an impressive achievement, though history has not been kind either to ActiveX or to DCOM.

3 thoughts on “Charlie Kindel leaving Microsoft”

  1. The General Manager of a Microsoft group is head of the product management (marketing), rather than the technology.

    Was he also on the marketing side in his previous roles, or was he in the tech side for some of them? Media Center was a great tech product that was hobbled by abysmal product planning. (Imagine, for example, if Microsoft had decoupled Media Center from Windows, putting it into set-top boxes like Google and Apple are doing now.)

    1. @Tom Microsoft role names are pretty confusing, but I don’t think a General Manager role is necessarily a marketing role. In Kindel’s case he was “General Manager of the Windows Phone Developer Ecosystem” according to his press release, which is a bit of an oddity since Developer Ecosystem is not a product; I think it is fair to describe it as an evangelist role but one with considerable influence. But no, I don’t believe Kindel is solely a marketing guy. Maybe others with more specific knowledge could say more.

      Tim

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