As much as I'm genuinely excited and sincerely optimistic about the great work from their developer group (e.g., the open source announcements this week), I also feel that their "if you can't compete on product, slander" negative ad campaigns (e.g., scroogled) will continue to hold Microsoft back as a company and as a culture.

This engineer, for example, would never consider going back and working there again as long as their executives think that negativity is a good business policy. And ultimately, their employees can (and have) voted with their feet.

Fix that, though, and yes, Microsoft is very much capable of reinventing itself for a new era.

Edit: To clarify, I'm sure that there are some readers who agree with the particular points raised in these negative campaigns. Generally speaking, I don't, but that's not my point here.

What bothers me is when, rather than promoting the values of one's own product, companies try to (sometimes even hypocritically) find or invent flaws in the competition instead. Be humble and respectful of your competitors and customers alike, build the best product you can (better than the competition if possible), and win on merit. I truly believe the talented, hard-working engineers deserve that much.