[snowwrestler]

I agree. Both Yammer and Skype had cool reputations before they were bought by Microsoft. They definitely didn't elevate MS to cool. I doubt GitHub would either.

Being cool is overrated, anyway. FOSS is cool now because it's incredibly useful to people--and by that I mean inexpensive and flexible, not just powerful. Microsoft will be cool again when they to make the most useful stuff.

They seem to be turning the corner on that, but reputation often lags reality by quite a bit. I mean, people still think of Apple as the "Think Different" company, even though their latest initiative is $17,000 gold watches for the nouveau riche. And people still think of Google as an open information company, despite their repeated neglect and killing of tools for openly managing information (Google Groups, Reader, etc.).