Two departures from Microsoft are making waves in the blogosphere today.

Brandon Watson, senior director of Windows Phone developer platform product management, is leaving to become the director of Amazon.com's Kindle cross-platform team. At Amazon, he'll be putting forward the roadmap for Kindle apps for first- and third-party platforms, one of which is Windows Phone.

"It's never easy to leave a place where you're having a great time and you love the team," Watson said. "To Amazon's credit, they put a unique opportunity in front of me and it was hard to say no."

And Stephen Toulouse, director of policy enforcement on Xbox Live, is leaving Microsoft, according to Neowin, which referred to Toulouse's personal blog where he said he was leaving the company after some 18 years because "I feel too strangely comfortable, and too strangely tied."