Microsoft Hires Yahoo! Executive To Run Online Services

Microsoft has appointed former Yahoo! executive Dr Qi Lu as the president of its online services group, with effect from 5 January 2009. Lu will lead Microsoft's efforts in search and online advertising and its online information and communications services.
Reporting to Microsoft's chief Steve Ballmer, Lu will oversee several groups including the advertiser and publisher solutions business, the online audience business, OSG research and development, and OSG Finance.

"I am genuinely excited about the opportunities ahead for Microsoft to make an enormous impact on the online industry," commented Lu. "Microsoft has built a great foundation for its search and advertising technologies and put an amazing team of researchers and engineers in place to drive the next wave of innovation in online services. I'm looking forward to working with them to help transform the way people and businesses use the Internet to find and share information."

Lu, most recently, served as executive vice president, engineering, search and advertising technology group, Yahoo! He left Yahoo! in August 2008 after 10 years of service. Before joining Yahoo!, Lu was a research staff member at IBM Almaden Research Center. Lu holds 20 U.S. patents and received his bachelor of science and master of science in computer science from Fudan University and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

With the integration of aQuantive now complete, Brian McAndrews, former CEO, aQuantive, and senior vice president of advertiser and publisher solutions group, Microsoft, has decided to move out of Microsoft and will do so over the next several months, serving in a consultative capacity to Steve Ballmer and Qi Lu during that time.

As part of this announcement, several teams will move to further align resources. The field sales organisations in the online services group will move to Microsoft's centralised sales, marketing and services group led by chief operating officer Kevin Turner. This group, called consumer and online, will be led by corporate vice president Darren Huston, and will include the global advertising sales and services organisation, led by vice president Bill Shaughnessy.