The Microsoft Blog at the Seattle PI, has a good article discussing Mr. Qi Lu’s responses in an interview. In particular, I’m impressed by what he says about focusing on quality of search -

1. New online services group president Qi Lu seems to advocate a return to the basics for Live search, emphasizing the importance of improving the quality of search results.
2. Lu repeatedly mentions that the opportunity in the market is to improve “product quality” in order to differentiate Live search.

The interview is rather revealing -

1. I totally agree with the focus on quality and basics – if Live doesn’t have a better search it has no chance. To be honest, it might have no chance even with a better search – however, having a search engine that is provably better than google is a necessary prerequisite.  
2. Ballmer sold Qi Lu on Microsoft by firstly stressing that Microsoft is super focused on investing in R&D, and secondly, stressing that product quality is the primary objective. 
3. Mr. Qi Lu sees two broad important trends in search in the next 1-2 years – the advent of more powerful computing architectures (cloud computing etc.), and the Web as a platform for publishing all sorts of content.

I really think this is a great hire for Microsoft.

Technorati Tags: microsoft search, qi lu

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