For Microsoft: In appointing Highfield, Microsoft may have found a high-profile candidate to finally do what it’s been unable to all these years - create a coherent web content proposition that successfully marries an advertising offering to rival Google’s. Despite ranking only second behind Google (NSDQ: GOOG) on UK internet share, Microsoft has suffered from, for example, branding decisions that have given its MSN services a kind of schizophrenia. Highfield is likely to bring a new focus on user experience, and his experience in managing a vast network of dozens of sites at the BBC seems like a great fit at Microsoft, which could benefit from harmonisation. Having grown used to navigating the politics of a large media organisation like the BBC and, after that, work with the Competition Commission, diplomacy at Microsoft should seem like a piece of cake. We’re still not sure, however, what any of this means for the GM of Microsoft’s UK online services group, Sharon Baylay, who is away on maternity leave.

Highfield’s critics will say his departure to Microsoft crowns a love affair with the company that marred his stewardship of the BBC’s iPlayer project. Highfield took flak from platform neutrality advocates riled by the original iPlayer incarnation’s dependence on a Windows app. A year before that, he had joined Bill Gates on stage at a pally Microsoft event in Las Vegas to demo joint BBC/Microsoft prototypes. His successor Erik Huggers came from Microsoft but, in a reversal that’s perhaps a response to the iPlayer episode, has gone further on platform neutrality than Highfield did.

For Channel 4: While Highfield may have made a name launching iPlayer for the BBC, in Rod Henwood, Kangaroo has picked an interim CEO replacement with similar tenure, involved in establishing Channel 4’s 4OD, the UK’s first major VOD service. Nowadays Kangaroo’s lead adviser on regulatory issues, Henwood is well suited to steer the JV through to February. His appointment could mean a greater say for C4 in Kangaroo’s direction. The broadcaster is suffering from a £100 million shortfall and awaiting Ofcom’s ruling on the future of its public funding - a joint venture with BBC Worldwide and ITV (LSE: ITV), Kangaroo represents just the kind of joined-up thinking C4 needs.