“In this role, he works on key strategic projects within the company, as well as with government and business leaders around the world on technology policy, regulation and standards,” Microsoft said in an updated biography on its corporate Web site.

Most of Mundie’s duties, including oversight of Microsoft Research and other technical strategy responsibilities, will now fall to Eric Rudder, who is the company’s chief technical strategy officer.

The move was announced internally in a Dec. 14 memo from CEO Steve Ballmer, but had not been publicized.

“Over his career, Craig has brought great value to the groups and initiatives he has started and overseen and now brings that wealth of experience to his new role, Ballmer said in the email. “Craig has also been instrumental in building relationships with governments and policymakers around the world.”

Rudder had already taken on some of Mundie’s former duties and, with the latest shift, adds oversight for the research arm as well as the company’s security efforts.

Mundie plans to retire when he turns 65, in 2014, Ballmer said in the memo.

Mundie had held the Chief Research and Strategy Officer title since Bill Gates announced his plan to cease working full-time at Microsoft back in 2006. Gates’s duties were split between Mundie and former Microsoft executive Ray Ozzie, who inherited Gates role as chief software architect.

Rudder, meanwhile, is a longtime Microsoft executive whose past duties include heading the company’s Server and Tools business and, way back when, serving as a technical assistant to Gates.

Image via Laura Stone

But what about the 1.3 million people in our community for whom things are not yet better — people who struggle to afford their basic needs like housing, childcare, adequate education and primary care?

It’s hard to have a conversation about the great philanthropists of our time and not talk about Bill Gates. He and others like Warren Buffett, Paul Tudor Jones and George Soros have done some truly groundbreaking things.

But when I think about extraordinary entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, I worry a little. It was only after he retired from Microsoft that he took on philanthropy in a serious way. With only two jobs for every seven unemployed Americans, four million children in under-performing schools across the country and 23 percent of Californians living in poverty, we simply can’t afford to wait until our great entrepreneurs retire to get to work.

At Tipping Point Community, we’ve had success in sparking the movement to break the cycle of poverty in the Bay Area and getting people to give at younger ages than ever before. In California in 2008, individuals gave $17.2 billion altogether, with nearly 64 percent coming from those under age 45. But there are still far too many people in leadership positions at our best and brightest companies telling me they simply don’t have time to get fully engaged in philanthropy at this point in their careers.

With the massive growth in cause-related marketing, it’s easy to feel like you’re doing your part. You can’t go to the grocery store without seeing products like Newman’s Own, a company that gives the post-tax profits from its pasta sauces to progressive causes; or the Yoplait yogurt containers that ask you to mail in the pink tops to fight breast cancer.

In general, these are great developments. But I also remember what Bono said recently on “The Daily Show.” He called the (RED) products from his ONE Campaign the “gateway drug” to becoming more involved in preventing the devastation and spread of AIDS and extreme global poverty. His point is that although we’ve seen a surge of opportunities and vehicles for giving, there are also new pitfalls to be aware of.

The danger in the type of consumer activism we see today is that people are lulled into the notion that philanthropy is somehow easy. Any thoughtful person who has made money and taken their stab at philanthropic giving will tell you that giving money away effectively is far more difficult than making it. Good philanthropy requires the same commitment, due diligence, evaluation and risk-taking required for good business.

The days of writing a check, hoping it does some good and walking away are gone. Today, donors rightfully expect a return on their philanthropic investments, yet it’s daunting and time-consuming to sift through hundreds of thousands of causes and nonprofits to find the right ones to support. Smart investors would rather wait until they can do the research themselves, or not give at all, than invest their hard-earned money in organizations they aren’t certain are effective.

Poverty here in the Bay Area is a huge problem. Some say the challenges we face — homelessness, unemployment, subpar schools and lack of access to quality health care — are unsolvable. We can point fingers, throw up our hands and hope someone else solves them, or we can recognize that we have the power and influence to do something. We can ask great questions, invest our dollars and time in vetted scalable solutions, and pledge our support for the long-term.

We simply can’t continue to depend on old models of philanthropy or on the old giving mindset. As a great philanthropist reminded me recently, it’s never too early, too often or too late to give. I ask everyone in the Bay Area to think about what we’d like to be known for — innovative solutions to complex problems for some, or for all? The time to give is now.

Daniel Lurie is the CEO and founder of Tipping Point Community.

Sometimes — even in the most complex of organizations, which software behemoth Microsoft most certainly is — it does come down to a simple choice.

And in the case of the seemingly sudden departure of Windows head Steve Sinofsky yesterday, several high-level sources at the company said that it came down to former CEO and co-founder Bill Gates’s backing of current CEO Steve Ballmer in the controversial decision to part ways with the powerful exec.

The goal? To better allow various units to work together more closely going forward.

While Gates — who is now chairman of Microsoft’s board — has had a longtime and very close relationship with Sinofsky, he supported the move by Ballmer to promote more integration of Microsoft’s other divisions and also involve other top executives more significantly than ever before in the planning and development of the next version of Windows.

This more collegial cross-division effort was different from the closely held, command-and-control and even secretive method for which Sinofsky had been well-known throughout the company. In fact, numerous sources said, it was anathema to him.

“There was Steve’s way or no other way,” said one exec, in a common sentiment about Sinofsky’s iron-handed rule of the flagship Windows business. “Now, in the new world we’re competing in, it’s about creating strong areas of integration among all our products.”

In this regard, Sinofsky was not known as someone who played well with others. While considered highly effective and “deeply brilliant” by most for being able to lasso Microsoft’s most important unit, he also had a longstanding reputation for being very difficult to work with.

And that includes working with Ballmer, who sources said Sinofsky had clashed with, and who also had been wary of Sinofsky, especially since he had been one of the internal candidates mentioned as a possible CEO successor.

Sources at Microsoft did not waste a moment to point out that the situation was akin to the tension between ousted software exec Scott Forstall at Apple and its new CEO Tim Cook.

A favorite of the late CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, who protected the prickly Forstall from criticism, his continued challenges after Cook took the reins at Apple ended with a similarly sudden departure.

Except in Sinofsky’s case it was not as sudden as it seemed. AllThingsD had gotten wind of preparation for his departure over the last several weeks, from a number of sources inside and outside Microsoft, even as Sinofsky readied the significant launches of both Windows 8 and Surface.

In fact, I had queried Microsoft about Sinofsky’s possible plans to leave over the weekend, but company spokesman Frank Shaw had declined to comment.

But even for those who are cheering the move internally, the departure of Sinofsky now leaves a decided leadership void in the upper ranks of the company.

Sinofsky demonstrated the ability to both tame the massive beast that is Windows and to push the operating system in new directions, all while hitting deadlines. Even with his challenging personality, those are significant feats.

Still, that accomplishment was often overshadowed by Sinofsky’s willingness to mix it up with other execs.

“He had no factions, except those who worked for him,” said one source. “He picked a lot of fights.”

That included tussles with former chief software architect Ray Ozzie — who left Microsoft in 2010, in part after battling against Sinofsky over how the cloud-based world was shaping up, and how Microsoft should respond.

Likewise, former Entertainment and Devices unit leaders Robbie Bach and J Allard also found themselves on the losing end of a corporate battle with Sinofsky, as Microsoft axed their planned Courier tablet and agreed to give tablet responsibilities to the Windows team. Both left the company in 2010.

Sinofsky also clashed with former Microsoft Business division head Stephen Elop, who left the company in 2010 to run Nokia, now an important partner in the smartphone business.

Having sided with Sinofsky in all those fights, though, Ballmer belatedly decided that he wasn’t the right choice to bring the company together in the future. Sources said Ballmer raised those concerns with Gates, who agreed.

Sinofsky’s departure is not without risk, because it’s not clear who at the company now has both the business and technical savvy to predict where the industry is going, and to point the company in that direction.

And it’s also uncertain if it is possible for Microsoft to now pull as a team at all, given the company’s longtime and decidedly pronounced proclivity for siloed fiefdoms like Sinofsky had built at Windows — an empire that will now, presumably, be disassembled for a new and more cohesive structure.

“The idea is for collaboration across boundaries that have been in place for too long,” said another source. “It’s easier said than done, of course.”

Of course, but sources said that among the key execs to look at in this regard are Online Services head Qi Lu and Servers & Tools President Satya Nadella.

Both have deep technological talents, as well as being well-liked at Microsoft.

More on what the Sinofsky departure means for them next.

The new 11 will join the Giving Pledge, a campaign Messrs. Gates and Buffett launched in 2010 to try to kick-start a new era of American philanthropy in which tycoons start making donations earlier in their lives, while they can still be involved in choosing how to spend it.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A prototype of a Kymeta portable hotspot, about the size of a laptop computer.

Kymeta is a spinout from Intellectual Ventures, the Nathan Myhrvold-run company best known for its irksome strategy of amassing patents and then looking to collect from companies whose products make use of the patents.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company is the second spinout for Intellectual Ventures, preceded by TerraPower, which aims to build a new kind of nuclear reactor.

Other backers of Kymeta include Liberty Global and Lux Capital.

Kymeta’s technology uses something called “metamaterials,” artificial materials that can manipulate electromagnetic radiation that can steer a radio signal toward a satellite, thereby creating a continuous broadband link.

The company said its method should pave the way for antennas that are thinner, lighter and cheaper than today’s satellite antennas.

“Metamaterials were an early focus for IV, so the spinout of Kymeta marks an important milestone in our invention work,” Intellectual Ventures Executive VP Casey Tegreene said in a statement. “As groundbreaking as it is, the satellite antenna technology behind Kymeta only scratches the surface of what metamaterials can do.”

Kymeta plans to create products for the aerospace, transportation and maritime industries, as well as for people like reporters and first responders. It also hopes to develop a portable satellite hotspot product for individual users. The goal is to have products on the market by 2015.

But this week, the Microsoft founder is focused on toilets. Heck, he even used the word “poop” in a tweet.

Michael Hanson/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

“4 out of 10 people don’t have a safe way to poop – that’s 2.6 billion!” Gates said in a Twitter posting on Monday.

Gates and his foundation have sponsored a “Reinvent the Toilet” challenge to help create innovations in toilet technology. The effort began last year with $400,000 grants to eight universities with ideas on how to create a better bowl.

The criteria set out by the Gates Foundation are pretty strict. The toilets have to be hygenic and sustainable, discharge no pollutants, generate energy, recover nutrients and only need a tiny amount of water. Oh yeah, and they also need to have a cost of operation of a nickel per person per day.

This week, the eight grant recipients are gathering in Seattle to compare notes. Two of the eight have working prototypes; the other six are all making good progress.

The projects are pretty impressive. Here is a sampling:

From the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands comes a toilet that uses microwave technology to transform human waste into electricity.

A Swiss team has a working model of a urine-diverting toilet (seen here) that recovers the water used to allow flushing, thanks to a gravity-driven biological membrane.

Michael Hanson/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Researchers at Canada’s University of Toronto are proposing a technology to treat solid waste within 24 hours through dehydration and smoldering that sanitizes.

Also using combustion is a project from the National University of Singapore that uses biological charcoal to burn solid waste, while boiling urine and using carbon to create purified water.

A team at Cal Tech is proposing a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity, with the solar panel powering an electrochemical reactor to break down water and human waste into hydrogen gas, which in turn can serve as a backup power source.

Update, 3:37 p.m.: Gates has now posted a blog with his own take on the toilet competition.

“When you think about it, the flush toilet is actually a pretty outdated sanitation solution,” Gates wrote. Gates said that the flush toilet was a breakthrough back when it was created in the 1700s by a Scottish mathematician. The toilet saved millions of lives, Gates concedes, by preventing diseases such as cholera.

“But the fact that four of every 10 people still don’t have access to flush toilets proves that—even today—it is a solution too expensive for much of the world,” Gates wrote. “And in an era where water is becoming increasingly precious, flush toilets that require 10 times more water than our daily drinking water requirement are no longer a smart or sustainable solution.”

And they’ve generated a lot of interest.

Though Apple declined to provide an official download number, sources in position to know tell AllThingsD that in just under a month downloads of the “Steve Jobs at D: All Things Digital” podcasts have hit the “low millions.”

Which is nice to hear. Because these interviews offer a fascinating, unscripted and unadorned portrait of someone who was a rare and transformative force in technology. And they really should be seen by more people.

The Jobs at D interviews — all six, including a wonderful joint appearance with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — are well worth watching. So if you follow Apple and you’ve not yet seen them, take some time and watch a few.

VIDEO PODCASTS    AUDIO PODCASTS

Below, a brief sampling of Jobs’s appearances at D to give you a taste of the longer videos available on iTunes.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120625/download-demand-for-steve-jobs-at-d-podcasts-strong/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120618/microsofts-long-love-affair-with-tablets/ http://allthingsd.com/20120618/microsofts-long-love-affair-with-tablets/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:32:20 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=221210 The success of the iPad could make one forget that it is Microsoft, not Apple, that has long been pushing for portable computing in slate form.

Bill Gates stood up at Comdex in Las Vegas in November 2000 and spoke of a coming wave of Tablet PCs that would be as adept at handling handwritten words as those typed on a keyboard.

The product shipped commercially in 2002 as Windows XP Tablet PC edition, and it found some niche use, particularly in business circles. However, to Gates’s lasting dismay, the product never became a mainstream hit.

Several years later, in a rarely remembered speech, Gates outlined a future for the tablet that should have led to something like the iPad. He spoke of a future of products costing as little as $500, delivering all-day battery life and a powerful touch experience.

Unfortunately, the product Microsoft and its partners delivered — under an effort known as Project Origami — fell well short of that goal. The devices, such as Samsung’s Q1, cost hundreds of dollars more, worked only so-so with finger-based touch, and had pitifully short battery life.

Had Microsoft given the project more time, it might have been on to something, but the company gave up before the technology caught up with Gates’s vision.

The most recent internal Microsoft project — before the one being introduced later on Monday, that is — was code-named Courier. Unlike the other efforts, which were housed within the Windows group, Courier was done by a team within the Entertainment and Devices unit.

Courier proposed a tablet as a powerful pen-based electronic journal, but the project was killed before it saw the light of day. Some said its demise prompted the exit of Robbie Bach and J Allard from Microsoft, though both executives cited other reasons for leaving.

And, of course, the past is prelude.

All this brings us to today. In a few short hours, we’ll hear about the new project, which, if Microsoft is to be successful, needs to chart a path all its own.

AllThingsD will have live coverage of Microsoft’s announcement, starting just ahead of the event at 3:30 pm PT.

RELATED POSTS:

• Microsoft’s Long Love Affair With Tablets
• Why Today Is a Major Watershed in the History of Microsoft
• Microsoft Is Doing Its Own Tablet. How Do You Like Them Apples?
• Microsoft Schedules L.A. Event for Some Windows Tablet Talk

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120618/microsofts-long-love-affair-with-tablets/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 22:55:25 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=207748 It’s a big week for Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook, his baby of the past eight years, is expected to go public on Friday morning. He’s just coming off a cross-country road show speaking to investment banks hungry to scoop up shares of Facebook stock.

And on top of it all, it’s May 14 — Mark’s 28th birthday.

Aside from the intense scrutiny of the company by the tech and financial press leading up to the IPO, Zuckerberg is doing all right. Especially when stacked up against some of the biggest names in tech that came before him.

Consider Steve Jobs. He was zooming along just fine in his twenties. Until, that is, in his 28th year he recruited the man who would eventually become his — and Apple’s — undoing (temporarily, of course). That man was John Sculley, then CEO President of Pepsi-Cola, who traded the position to be the CEO of Apple Computer after intense courting from Jobs. Of course, Sculley would eventually play a part in Jobs’s ouster from Apple; Sculley would also oversee the company in what proved to be the darkest years in its 36-year history. Jobs was also in the process of launching the Lisa when he was 28, one of the biggest commercial computer hardware failures the company has ever released. In other words, 28 wasn’t the greatest year of Jobs’s career.

Amazon luminary Jeff Bezos’s best years were yet to come. At 28, he was still at his hedge fund gig, where he first saw the opportunity in the fast-growing Internet use around the country. Two years later, he would go off on his own to start Amazon.

Bill Gates, on one hand, had founded Microsoft in 1976 — then known as “Micro-Soft,” begun in a small Albuquerque office in partnership with Paul Allen — at the ripe age of 20. It’s the same age Zuck was when he officially founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. At 28, Gates was certainly upwardly mobile — the year before his 28th saw him begin to license MS-DOS — though his best years were yet to come: In two years, Gates would launch the first retail version of the Windows operating system.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still three years off from Google’s IPO when they turned 28 (Page in March of 2001, Brin in August). It was that year in which the two — who had run Google since they co-founded it in 1998 — decided to turn the reins over to Eric Schmidt, a learned executive well versed in leading technology companies. Unlike Zuckerberg, who retains full control over Facebook with his majority of voting rights, Page and Brin let a seasoned Valley veteran guide Google through its early days.

In all, it seems Zuck is doing just fine. Still two years off from the big 30, he’s number 35 on Forbes’ Billionaires List with an estimated net worth of $17.5 billion. Better still, he’s got a longtime live-in girlfriend and an adorable floor mop of a dog, “Beast.”

Happy birthday, Mr. Zuckerberg. And enjoy a quiet moment of reflection while you can; Friday isn’t too far off.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20120503/yahoos-board-will-review-resume-discrepancy-of-ceo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120503/yahoos-board-will-review-resume-discrepancy-of-ceo/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 02:28:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=203599

Yahoo just released a statement that its board will “review” today’s revelation that the bio of its CEO Scott Thompson contained an error related to his educational achievements and will make “appropriate disclosure” about what happened.

On both the Web site and in the regulatory filings of the Silicon Valley Internet giant, Thompson is described as having a degree in both computer science and accounting from Stonehill College.

He does not have a degree in computer science from the Boston-based school, but does have a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration (Accounting).

Yahoo said in full in its statement:

“In connection with the statement the company made earlier today about Scott Thompson, the Yahoo! board will be reviewing this matter, and upon completion of its review, will make an appropriate disclosure to shareholders.”

Earlier today, Yahoo first blamed the issue on an “inadvertent error” — but provided no further details — which sources said did not sit well with the board.

“Many members of the board are deeply concerned,” said one person with knowledge of its thinking. “This is a problem on a lot of levels, especially related to the trust of shareholders.”

Indeed, especially since the news came to light via activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point, who is agitating for board seats via a proxy fight.

Loeb’s efforts to impugn Thompson appear to have caused some level of damage, at least in terms of perception about the level of vetting that was done when the former president of eBay’s PayPal unit was hired earlier this year.

In fact, the error has been around for a half-dozen years, which begs the question of why Thompson never noticed it.

While his bio on filings made by eBay to the Securities and Exchange Commission were accurate, the one on the online commerce site’s Web site incorrectly said he had a computer science degree.

It is not known who introduced the error there.

But the inaccuracy moved inexplicably to both Yahoo’s corporate Web site and also its SEC filings, and the company declined to provide any details earlier today as to how that happened.

It’s not clear what happens next, or if there are any legal implications, beyond a needed correction by Yahoo with the SEC — which already took the entire line about Thompson’s education off his Web bio today.

As I wrote earlier today:

Thompson himself is probably not at risk unless it can be definitely proved he was the one who misrepresented having the degree in the first place. He can simply say he had no idea who added it to the eBay Web site and that he did not notice it there on the Yahoo Web site and SEC filings.

While that makes him look careless, how big a deal it becomes with shareholders, as well as Yahoo employees, is also an unknown. While a computer science degree is not a requirement for a CEO of a tech company — both Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates dropped out of college and did pretty well in computer science anyway — tech resume padding, even inadvertent, is not a characteristic that is going endear Thompson to anyone.

The controversy could not have come at a worse time — Thompson was actually in meetings all day yesterday and today with senior staff, following recent layoffs of 2,000 and a massive restructuring, to discuss plans for moving the long-troubled company forward.

And besides the proxy fight, he is also dealing with selling off Yahoo’s Asian assets, renegotiating a new search deal with Microsoft, and also trying to figure out what parts of Yahoo to keep and what parts to jettison to improve its prospects.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120503/yahoos-board-will-review-resume-discrepancy-of-ceo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120503/how-did-phantom-cs-degree-get-on-ceos-bio-in-sec-filings-yahoos-not-saying/ http://allthingsd.com/20120503/how-did-phantom-cs-degree-get-on-ceos-bio-in-sec-filings-yahoos-not-saying/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 23:08:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=203523

Back in early 2008 when Scott Thompson got the job as president of eBay’s PayPal, the regulatory filing accurately listed his educational pedigree:

“Mr. Thompson holds a B.S. degree in Accounting from Stonehill College.”

The eBay filings over the next several years — until he left the online commerce giant for a much bigger job as CEO of Yahoo in January of this year — remained consistent.

But, curiously, Thompson’s bio on eBay’s Web site added an additional degree to his curriculum vitae for more than a half-dozen years, different from its Securities and Exchange Commission documents:

“Scott received a bachelor’s in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College.”

As it turned out, according to the Boston-area school, he had not gotten a computer science degree at all and graduated with the Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration (Accounting).

An eBay spokesman I called today had no explanation for the discrepancy, except to note that its legal filings were correct and that it was an error due to the lack of cross-checking the Web bio, which was apparently posted by Thompson’s staff at the time.

Also without explanation — and perhaps more seriously — is that the false computer science degree claim somehow then made it into Yahoo’s SEC filings, as well as his Web site bio, when Thompson took the helm. (The inaccurate line about his schooling is in its latest filing and all others.)

Without providing further explanation of how it got there, Yahoo today called the mistake an “inadvertent error” and said it had no bearing on his ability to lead the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

But the long troubled company might be speaking too soon, given that the revelation was uncovered this morning by activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point. Loeb has called into question the vetting process that Yahoo’s directors did to hire Thompson, as part of a proxy fight he is waging to gain several board seats.

And, while such an allegation is normal for an increasingly nasty battle, Loeb has hit his mark with deadly accuracy this time, putting into question both Thompson’s credibility and Yahoo’s obvious botching in its vetting of him.

“If there is a good explanation for the apparent discrepancies regarding the academic records of Mr. Thompson and Ms. Hart, we are confident that it will be provided promptly,” wrote Loeb in a letter to Yahoo’s board today. “However, in the event that there is no good explanation, we expect the Board to take immediate action.”

The Ms. Hart that Loeb was referring to is Patti Hart, the board member who ran Yahoo’s process for hiring a new CEO after it fired Carol Bartz — who does have a CS degree — last year. (In his letter today, Loeb also correctly called into question how she portrayed her own college degree in a more impressive fashion than was accurate.)

The search for a new Yahoo CEO was conducted by headhunter Heidrick & Struggles, which did not have Thompson on its list of candidates, since it had placed him at eBay many years before.

In fact, according to numerous sources, without involvement by Heidrick, it was Thompson who cold-emailed key Yahoo board members, nominating himself for the CEO job. He was quickly brought in for interviews and, presumably, a thorough vetting.

Despite that and despite the fact that eBay’s SEC filings did not list a computer science degree, Hart or others seem to have totally missed the discrepancies and it was added to Thompson’s official Yahoo bio and legal filings.

It’s not clear what happens next or if there are any legal implications, beyond a needed correction by Yahoo with the SEC — which already took the entire line about Thompson’s education off his Web bio today.

Yahoo’s not talking either, with its spokesperson declining to provide any explanation for its lapse or who had maintained that Thompson had that degree when he did not.

It’s essentially a mistakes-were-made-let’s-move-on defense.

I think not, for my part, and a number of prominent Silicon Valley people I spoke to today agreed that these issues tend to spin out of control.

“This is going to get very messy, very quickly,” said one person in a common sentiment I heard.

Maybe, and it’s not clear if the company has to release any details of how this occurred or if its board needs to investigate the situation.

In addition, Thompson himself is probably not at risk unless it can be definitely proved he was the one who misrepresented having the degree in the first place. He can simply say he had no idea who added it to the eBay Web site and that he did not notice it there on on the Yahoo Web site and SEC filings.

While that makes him look careless, how big a deal it becomes with shareholders, as well as Yahoo employees, is also an unknown. While a computer science degree is not a requirement for a CEO of a tech company — both Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates dropped out of college and did pretty well in computer science anyway — tech resume padding, even inadvertent, is not a characteristic that is going endear Thompson to anyone.

Plus, it just handed Loeb a very potent weapon in his fight against Yahoo, the very day after the company said the hedge fund manager’s expertise was not “relevant” to gaining a board seat.

One thing’s for sure: Loeb is most certainly very good at vetting.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

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