Microsoft’s PressPass recently interviewed Dr. Qi Lu, the new President of Microsoft’s Online Service Group about his plans for taking Microsoft’s search products to the next level.
Microsoft Dr. Qi Lu
Source – Microsoft PressPass
Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Lu was executive vice president of Engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo. Prior to his 10 years at Yahoo, Lu was a Research Staff Member at IBM’s Almaden Research Center. He also has worked at Carnegie Mellon University as a Research Associate and at Fudan University in China as a faculty member. Lu holds 20 U.S. patents, and received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in computer science from Fudan University in Shanghai, and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Excerpts from Microsoft’s PressPass interview with Dr. Lu:
PressPass: Where do you see the opportunities for Microsoft in the search and online space?
Lu: First, I think there is a genuine opportunity to take our search products to the next level. I see that Microsoft’s search product quality is improving at a very, very fast rate, that there are great foundations there. And with the technology base, the talent base, the computing infrastructures, I’m confident that we will be in a position to produce a differentiated and compelling search experience.
The second opportunity is to continue building a very powerful advertising platform. Microsoft has made a series of strategic acquisitions, and also built a bunch of internal technologies and products. The key is to put all those assets together to build powerful, highly scalable advertising platforms. The advertising we see today will be very different in the future because of new platforms for it. Ads will be truly relevant and useful, and the experience will be compelling.
PressPass: Whenever anyone talks about competition in search, the target always is Google. Are they catchable?
Lu: Well, we’re here to win, and my view on this is that to win in the search space, fundamentally you build on the strengths of your product. And we know what it takes to build a compelling user experience and winning product, which is to have a powerful infrastructure, great talent and put great processes in place so that we can out-develop, out-market, out-innovate our competitors.
But make no mistake; I think Google is a very, very powerful company. They are definitely ahead in the search space. There are a lot of challenges ahead. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
It will be interesting to see in which direction Microsoft heads with ex-Yahoo Dr. Lu at the Microsoft search helm.
Will Microsoft resume talks to acquire Yahoo’s search business?
Will Microsoft continue developing their own search product?
Or – will Microsoft now attempt to accomplish both (buy Yahoo’s search business and migrate Yahoo search advertisers to adCenter while attempting to improve Microsoft’s search and advertising products) in their quest to catch Google?
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