Microsoft Sends the Lync and NextHop Blogs to the Cloud, Customers Take it As a Statement

After finding today that the Microsoft OneDrive Groups feature was axed without warning, I was a little surprised to see a comment from John_Adams (thanks, John!) that Microsoft has also recently started "disappearing" other, more popular sources. I'm also surprised that I've not heard this before today.

According to posts on both the NextHop and Lync Team blogs, both resources are being consolidated into the Office Blogs (blogs.office.com). The content for both resources will remain in place for the near future (Microsoft says several months), but Microsoft cannot commit to a specific time frame. They also suggest that those still interested in the content should use the time to archive and copy valuable articles locally. It's just strange to hear a Microsoft web property actually suggest to customers to use the data offline.

Both blog posts contain a long number of comment replies and none of them are good. From "bad decision" to "the new Office blog is awful" to "WOW, who makes these decisions? A manager with NO tech experience in Microsoft?"

And, once again, Microsoft is seen as taking something away important to IT Pros. The list of perceived take-aways just keeps getting longer. TechNet Subscriptions, the Microsoft Management Summit, others. What's next?

One commenter puts it this way…

Is this Microsoft's master plan? Kill all the good Technical blogs > dumb down everyone > now everyone must move to Public Cloud / Office 365 > now that you do not have any skill.............

And, that really is the perception. Microsoft keeps taking things away without providing things in return, particularly for the IT Pro crowd. As I noted in Feet on the Ground: TechEd 2014 Review for IT Pros, Microsoft had a huge chance to redeem itself in the eyes of its most loyal supporters, yet themed the event around moving to the Public Cloud.

Tsk, tsk. The war on IT continues.