At the start of December Microsoft confirmed that the former executive vice president of Engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo had switched sides and was going to take the lead of its Online Services Group. Scheduled to take on his new position come January 5, 2009.

Dr. Qi Lu revealed that he was gearing up to hit the ground running, while Microsoft's target in term of online search could not be clearer. Lu admitted Google's superiority in the search space, and acknowledged the challenges that Microsoft would face in its attempt to catch up with the Mountain View-based search giant, stating that “we've got our work cut out for us.”

“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,” Lu stated.

Dr. Qi Lu was recruited at Microsoft by none other than the Chief Executive Office Steve Ballmer. According to Lu, Ballmer promised that Microsoft had a strong commitment on continuing its investments in research and development, while at the same time focusing on delivering high-quality products in order to increase competitive chances on the market. In this context, Lu pointed out that there were a couple of major occasions for Microsoft to compete against Google.

“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,” Lu added. “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.”