Ex-Microsoft executive to help run eHome
Thompson, 43, left to become chief financial officer at Go2Net, a Web business in Seattle. Go2Net later merged with Bellevue-based InfoSpace and Thompson left in January 2001. He has since worked with his own businesses, including Seattle Chocolate, which he owns, and Ferrari of Seattle, of which he is a co-owner.
"I'm looking forward to getting back with Microsoft, getting back in the saddle again," he said yesterday.
Previously, Thompson led Microsoft's hardware business and helped develop the Xbox game console. He first joined the company in 1987.
Thompson's return is not a signal that the eHome division will build and sell hardware devices or PCs, spokeswoman Jodie Cadieux said. She said his hiring had more to do with "his thinking about the consumer space and thinking about what consumers want and being successful."
Thompson succeeds Mike Toutonghi, a vice president who started the division last year to develop special versions of the Windows software. Its goal is to expand usage and capabilities of PCs by adding consumer-oriented features such as digital video recorders and television-style remote controls.
The Media Center software developed by eHome went on sale last month on a line of Hewlett-Packard computers with built-in DVD recorders and advanced graphics and media capabilities. Last week, Gateway and three smaller PC makers announced similar plans.
"I'm eager to learn all the different missions that are under way in the group and make sure everybody knows what they're working on and I'll back the organization as much as can," Thompson said.
Toutonghi, one of the elite "distinguished engineers" at the company, is taking a sabbatical for at least three months. He conceived the eHome division during an earlier sabbatical.
"The role he'll take when he comes back will entirely depend on what's available and what he feels is a good right fit for him," Cadieux said.
Brier Dudley: 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.
European official's hiring by Microsoft is criticized
BRUSSELS, Belgium — Microsoft has hired a European Union (EU) official to whom competitors said they provided confidential arguments and evidence for the commission's antitrust case against the world's largest software maker.
Detlef Eckert, who was head of analysis and policy planning in the commission's Information Society department, is taking a three-year leave of absence to work for Microsoft, commission spokesman Per Haugaard said.
"I and others working with me as interveners in the case shared with him our full range of views and inside information on our objectives and strategy," said Ed Black, president of Computer and Communications Industry Association, a Washington, D.C.-based group whose members include Intel, Oracle and Yahoo!.
Eckert sent a memo to the commission stating he will "fully comply" with conflict-of-interest rules not to reveal confidential commission information to Microsoft, Haugaard said. He pledged not to carry out related work or to lobby the commission for Microsoft.
— Bloomberg News