BusinessWeek Logo
In Depth May 28, 2009, 11:30AM EST

Is Qi Lu Microsoft's Search Engine Savior?

(page 2 of 2)

Ballmer: Lu is simply "the best guy on the planet to run a search business" Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images

Lu and his team have also designed a pane on the left third of the search page that generates a "table of contents" for each search. Entering "U2" brings up categories such as "songs," "tickets," and "biography," while a search for "Honda Accord" offers to lead you to "used," "reviews," and "specs." "For anything beyond finding a Web site—say, finding a person, buying a product, finding a relationship—today's search experience is not compelling," says Lu.

The marketing blitz will hit a similar note. In one TV spot, Microsoft will poke fun at Google by comparing its search to a bad relationship where your significant other takes too long to respond to questions and then gives the wrong answers three out of four times. Microsoft has also spent hundreds of millions on distribution deals that will make Bing the default search engine on Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) PCs and Verizon phones.

LOVING THE 19-HOUR DAY

Google is certainly paying attention. The company has been adding a number of new features to its own search engine in recent months. And at a press event on May 12, Google unveiled an option to open a new left-pane feature that resembles Microsoft's technology. Marissa Mayer, vice-president for search products and user experience, declined to comment on Microsoft specifically, but says, "Search is really in its infancy. We're just really getting started."

Lu, 47, has been as involved as anyone in the technology's history. After a brief stint at IBM, he helped meld three Yahoo acquisitions to launch its first search offering in the late 1990s and later oversaw development of the technology that lets Yahoo make money by placing ads alongside search results. Along the way, he earned a reputation for having both technical chops and relentless work habits. He wakes at 3:00 a.m. most days, takes a five-mile run, and often works until 10:00 p.m. "It doesn't feel long because I love every day," says Lu, who is married with two children.

These qualities made him something of an institution at Yahoo, where he constantly pressed for management to pour more dollars into building the technology infrastructure necessary to keep pace in search. In the end, sources say he lost faith in the company's ability to do so, and left. Former Yahoo engineer Amit Kumar says Lu was "universally well liked" and at his going-away party T-shirts were handed out that read: "I worked with Qi. Did you?"

A FATEFUL ENCOUNTER

Lu has faced tough challenges since he was a boy. Facing persecution during China's Cultural Revolution, his parents sent him from their Shanghai home to live with his grandfather in a tiny town in Jiangsu province, five hours away. Lu lived without electricity or plumbing, and was so poor that meat was a once-a-year luxury. His first two choices to escape poverty were closed off: His slight build left him short of government weight mandates for coveted ship-building jobs, and his eyesight was too poor to pass requirements for becoming a physicist.

That left computer science, which he hoped might help him land a job in a radio factory. Instead, after earning his master's degree, he was assigned to a $10 a month teaching job at Fudan University in Shanghai. One weekend a rainstorm prevented his weekly bike ride home to see his parents, so he was in his dorm room when a student knocked and pleaded with him to attend a talk by Carnegie Mellon professor Edmund M. Clark since only a few students had showed up. Impressed with Lu's questions, Clark asked to see his research papers and then offered him a scholarship to earn his PhD—even waiving the $45 application fee that Lu says he could never have come up with.

Even fans question whether he has the business acumen to be Microsoft's savior. One former Yahoo executive thinks Lu's main allure to Microsoft is that he'd be the perfect person to integrate Yahoo's search operation if Ballmer ever manages to gain control of the business, which Microsoft bid for last year. Ballmer disputes this. "Qi is here because he's absolutely the best guy on the planet to run a search business."

When Lu arrived in December as president of Microsoft's Online Services Division, he inherited a division that began planning its search offensive in mid-2007. That's when Ballmer asked Susan Athey, a young Harvard economist who studies auctions, to help rethink the search effort. In an initial session in Redmond, Athey quelled fears that there may not be room for a second player in the business, but only if Microsoft got much larger and learned to innovate much faster. Just buying Yahoo, as Ballmer was trying to do, wouldn't be enough. Later hired as Microsoft's chief economist, Athey led the research effort that uncovered consumers' frequent troubles with search. "There's no reason Microsoft couldn't catch Google," she says.

Since acccepting, Lu's priorities are to set long-term strategy while tightening up operations. One of his mantras: "Have your head above the clouds but your feet on the ground." He arrives at meetings with stacks of documents, many with notes jotted down in the margins, and requires that a summary be written up afterwards. He is also pushing through changes so that the search group can forecast revenues on a daily rather than monthly basis, to react more quickly to what's working.

Still, he thinks Microsoft's real strength is its willingness to lay out a multi-year plan to gain on Google. Lu's group is working more closely with Microsoft Research so new technologies can be integrated into search. Soon, people with mobile phones will be able to speak search terms, rather than type them. Eventually, Lu says those looking for answers will be able to push beyond the limits of typing a few words in a rectangular box. "This is just the first step in a long journey," he says.

Burrows is a senior writer for BusinessWeek, based in Silicon Valley.

Reader Discussion

 

BW Mall - Sponsored Links

Buy a link now!