Bing Executive Qi Lu: “We’re very happy with the Yahoo partnership”

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Yahoo has changed significantly since Marissa Mayer took over the company. _In fact before she became CEO, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had a deal with then interim CEO Ross Levinsohn wherein Yahoo would turn over its entire search business — patents and all — in exchange for Microsoft’s large online media property, MSN.com, and long-term, guaranteed cash payments. _Within 24 hours of hearing the deal Mayer killed it and fired the executive who had spent months negotiating it. _ A few months later rumors came about that Mayer had met with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to discuss the possibility of partnering to create a search engine. Some time later_Mayer tried to slow the rollout of its search deal with Microsoft._ Court filings showed Mayer questioned Microsoft’s commitment. _A U.S. judge ended up ruling that Yahoo must adopt Microsoft’s search technology in Taiwan and Hong Kong under their partnership. _Mayer has continued to look for loopholes and recently announced a partnership with Yelp for local search. _Microsoft countered with a...

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Before Microsoft Qi Lu was best known for leading Yahoo’s search efforts. _After his departure from the company in 2008, Lu was personally recruited by Ballmer to join the Redmond software giant. Lu helped was instrumental in creating the search alliance partnership with Yahoo and the launch of the rebranded Bing. _ Lu is known as an atypical engineer often found wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals with socks. With Ballmer’s reorganization plan Lu was promoted from President of the online services division to executive_vice president of Microsoft’s Applications and Services Group. _ This expanded Lu’s responsibilities, in addition to Bing & Advertising he now oversees_Microsoft Office, Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Lync, Skype. With the recent announcement of Office for the iPad, Recode interviewed Qi Lu: Re/code: What are the top problems you are working to solve right now? Qi Lu:_My group’s charter is to build connected applications. Our fundamental focus and mission is to deliver experiences and scenarios that enable individual end users or organizations to get more...

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