On the heels of further bad news about Vista--the latest being that Adobe now says it has no plans to issue updates to the current versions of its products to ensure Windows Vista compatibility--comes a backstabbing by Microsoft's former pet poodle, Robert Scoble.In his Scobleizer blog late last week, Scoble excoriated his former employer for--in his words--sucking. That's right: "Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks." Good for Scoble. He's traveled quite a distance from the years he spent blogging from the halls at Microsoft, spinning the good spin and generally defending the company against any and all detractors.

He's especially on the mark when he talks about Microsoft's much-maligned Windows Live, the umbrella term for the company's strategy to offer business services over the Web. What got Scoble's goat: a talk by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in which Ballmer disparaged archrival Google as putting out products that were "sort of cute." Google cute? Scoble scoffed at the idea and compared that kind of cheap shot to a football coach "talking trash" in the press in a way that only motivates the opposing team.

Indeed, Google's got a lot more on the ball than Microsoft in the Web-based services space. Again quoting Scoble's blog:

Google's secret weapon? It controls the entire stack in the datacenter. Google writes its own hard disk drivers. It has its datacenter hardware built to its spec. Ever wonder why Live.com is slower than Google? Hint: it's cause Google is out executing Microsoft in the datacenter.

What do you think? Do you agree with Scoble? Or do you think he's taking his own cheap shots? Let us know what you think by responding to the InformationWeek Blog.