Google grabs top Microsoft exec for China lab
Source: National Business Review (Slightly Extracted)
When Google announced yesterday that it had hired a top Microsoft executive, Kai-Fu Lee, to head up its nascent R&D facility in China, Microsoft said the search giant had violated an unwritten code of conduct that requires corporate poachers to stomp loudly around in the woods when hunting -- and filed a lawsuit [click for copy of the complaint, courtesy Siliconbeat].
First, the good news for Google: Dr Lee is quite a catch, as a quick read of Microsoft's complaint against him will attest.
The highest ranking Microsoft executive to defect from Redmond to Mountain View, Dr Lee served until earlier this month as corporate vice president of the Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD), where he was responsible for the development of technologies and services to make user interfaces simpler and more natural. Under that umbrella, Dr Lee was working the point for Microsoft in a number of key areas known to be of high interest to Google, including speech technologies, natural language use and advanced search and help.
According to the complaint, Dr Lee was directly responsible for the development of MSN search -- including its desktop search tool, which was an area pioneered by Google.
Google's hire names him as the company's vice President for engineering and president of Google China, where he will oversee the opening of a product research and development centre in an as-yet unnamed city.
That's something he will know how to do because he did virtually the same thing for Microsoft, where, beginning in 1998, he founded Microsoft Research Asia, located in Beijing.
The Microsoft China R&D centre is now widely acknowledged to be among the premiere technology R&D centres in the world, holding, as Microsoft says, "a prolific publication and product transfer record."
According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft had known before the event that Dr Lee was heading over to Google, but got a terrific shock when they found out -- from Google's press release on the hire -- what he'd been hired to do.
"The job they hired him to do is absolutely in direct competition with the work he was doing at Microsoft," Microsoft lawyer Tom Burt told the Seattle Times. "Not only is it at a competitor, it's directly competitive work."
What's at issue may not be just the fact that Dr Lee will head up a China-based R&D centre but more about his immediately past leadership role on Microsoft search tools and the depth of his familiarity with Microsoft's business strategies for China. Billions will ride on the success each company has in tooling up for Chinese users, and the R&D centres are likely to be competing in a very specialised way.
Microsoft said in the lawsuit it filed only hours after the announcement that it was moving to protect its intellectual property.
"We are asking the Court to require Dr Lee and Google to honor the confidentiality and non-competition agreements he signed when he began working for Microsoft.
"Creating intellectual property is the essence of what we do at Microsoft, and we have a responsibility to our employees and our shareholders to protect our intellectual property.
"As a senior executive, Dr Lee has direct knowledge of Microsoft’s trade secrets concerning search technologies and China business strategies.
"He has accepted a position focused on the same set of technologies and strategies for a direct competitor in egregious violation of his explicit contractual obligations," Microsoft said.
When Google announced yesterday that it had hired a top Microsoft executive, Kai-Fu Lee, to head up its nascent R&D facility in China, Microsoft said the search giant had violated an unwritten code of conduct that requires corporate poachers to stomp loudly around in the woods when hunting -- and filed a lawsuit [click for copy of the complaint, courtesy Siliconbeat].
First, the good news for Google: Dr Lee is quite a catch, as a quick read of Microsoft's complaint against him will attest.
The highest ranking Microsoft executive to defect from Redmond to Mountain View, Dr Lee served until earlier this month as corporate vice president of the Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD), where he was responsible for the development of technologies and services to make user interfaces simpler and more natural. Under that umbrella, Dr Lee was working the point for Microsoft in a number of key areas known to be of high interest to Google, including speech technologies, natural language use and advanced search and help.
According to the complaint, Dr Lee was directly responsible for the development of MSN search -- including its desktop search tool, which was an area pioneered by Google.
Google's hire names him as the company's vice President for engineering and president of Google China, where he will oversee the opening of a product research and development centre in an as-yet unnamed city.
That's something he will know how to do because he did virtually the same thing for Microsoft, where, beginning in 1998, he founded Microsoft Research Asia, located in Beijing.
The Microsoft China R&D centre is now widely acknowledged to be among the premiere technology R&D centres in the world, holding, as Microsoft says, "a prolific publication and product transfer record."
According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft had known before the event that Dr Lee was heading over to Google, but got a terrific shock when they found out -- from Google's press release on the hire -- what he'd been hired to do.
"The job they hired him to do is absolutely in direct competition with the work he was doing at Microsoft," Microsoft lawyer Tom Burt told the Seattle Times. "Not only is it at a competitor, it's directly competitive work."
What's at issue may not be just the fact that Dr Lee will head up a China-based R&D centre but more about his immediately past leadership role on Microsoft search tools and the depth of his familiarity with Microsoft's business strategies for China. Billions will ride on the success each company has in tooling up for Chinese users, and the R&D centres are likely to be competing in a very specialised way.
Microsoft said in the lawsuit it filed only hours after the announcement that it was moving to protect its intellectual property.
"We are asking the Court to require Dr Lee and Google to honor the confidentiality and non-competition agreements he signed when he began working for Microsoft.
"Creating intellectual property is the essence of what we do at Microsoft, and we have a responsibility to our employees and our shareholders to protect our intellectual property.
"As a senior executive, Dr Lee has direct knowledge of Microsoft’s trade secrets concerning search technologies and China business strategies.
"He has accepted a position focused on the same set of technologies and strategies for a direct competitor in egregious violation of his explicit contractual obligations," Microsoft said.
