14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has confirmed that Don Bradford, the Engineering Manager in charge of Bing’s client user experience, has resigned from Microsoft.
As for Yahoo, the company has confirmed that Bradford is joining in, but has not yet disclosed on what his title will be, Mary Jo Foley reports.
Officials at Microsoft did not confirm Bradford’s last day at the job, and all that a spokesperson said was “Yes, Don is leaving. We wish him well in his new endeavors.”
Apparently, Bradford will join a team of former Microsoft employees, many from the Microsoft’s Online Systems Division and its search team, according to Mary Jo Foley.
Yahoo has “gathered” several Microsoft managers like Blake Irving (former Windows Live bigwig), Bill Shaughnessy (former Global Ad Sales guy) and John Metheny (formerly with the Kin team).
As for Bradford, he has been working at Microsoft for a while now, managing not only teams from the Bing unit, but also Windows Live, Hotmail and MSN.
His first Microsoft job was back in 1995, when he served as General Manager for Macintosh Internet Development Unit.
Between 2005 and 2007, Bradford also was the General Manager on the Live Incubator, right after coming back to Microsoft from Scalix, where he was Vice President of Development.
Before 2008, Bradford was a Group Program Manager for Live Search Communities, working on Live Boards, Ratings and Reviews, QnA and search personalization.
Starting July 2008, he was the Engineering Manager (Partner level) for Bing UX (user experience) across the PC, tablet and server (according to information on his LinkedIn profile).
There is one intriguing thing about Bradford though: when searching, either on Bing or on Google, for his picture, there are no results.
Oh yes, and in the US Department of Justice vs. Microsoft trial, one of his emails came up, in which he apparently discusses using Microsoft’s Office software as a “club to use on Apple”.
Don Bradford was the former General Manager of Mac Internet Development and helped build the Microsoft Mac Business Unit team.