Exclusive: Microsoft Strategy Exec Hank Vigil to Depart, Will Remain Advisor

Microsoft’s SVP of Strategy and Partnership Hank Vigil will be leaving the software giant to focus on investing in and advising for early-stage start-up companies. But the 25-year company veteran will also become a “strategic adviser” to Microsoft. That’s probably a good idea, since Vigil is one of the company’s most visible and well-liked execs in the tech community, especially in Silicon Valley.
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The Yahoo Circus Pulls Into Sun Valley Next Week

Starting Tuesday this week, all the major players in the Yahoo-Microsoft-Everyone-And-Their-Mother circus will line their private jets up in Sun Valley for the high-powered 26th annual Allen & Co. confab of tech and media moguls. That would be Microsoft, Yahoo, News Corp., Time Warner (which owns AOL), as well as Google. It could be like that five families sitdown in the “Godfather” movies, except none of the parties can even seem to metaphorically whack each other, as the Yahoo saga drags on interminably.

WWMD: What Will Microsoft Do?

Well, I can tell you what Microsoft might do if it ever got Yahoo to stop snubbing its efforts to acquire the troubled Internet portal. According to numerous sources familiar with Microsoft’s thinking whom I have been talking to this past week, quite a lot–from creating a single search index to forming one common ad platform to running the place with longtime Microsoft execs at the helm. So let’s just ignore for now the latest wrinkle in this obviously dysfunctional relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft–which is beginning to remind me of that bizarre Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and football situation.