If you can’t acquire them, just hire them! Microsoft, which made a play to acquire Yahoo via hostile takeover last year, has forged ahead and launched their new search engine Bing, while establishing a strategy of hiring former Yahoo Search engineers.
On Monday Microsoft hired VP of Operations at Yahoo Kevin Timmons, to head up their Data Center Services. At Yahoo, Timmons championed the building out of their data centers and infrastructure. Back in the day, Timmons was also a director for Geocities … the original user generated content “build your own website” social program from the 90’s.
More from the Microsoft Datacenters blog :
Kevin is known as a hands-on leader with a great grasp on the issues in his field and a keen interest in increasing energy efficiency. One of the key ways he has approached that challenge was by closely measuring efficiency at each data center and using PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) as a key metric—a strategy that helped build more efficient data centers. Kevin also brings valuable experience and know-how in the field of data center site selection. Anyone familiar with our areas of focus in Microsoft data centers, especially around environmental sustainability, will recognize the great fit Kevin’s experiences bring to the team. In sitting down with him and exploring these areas in depth, I’ve become increasingly excited about the industry experience Kevin brings to our team.
To add to the mix, Todd Bishop at TechFlash adds that Microsoft has hired Yongdong Wang, former Yahoo VP of International Search, who may be overseeing the International rollout of Bing.
Furthermore, Knut Risvik, who was a Google Engineering Director and previously worked at Yahoo as a Chief Architect after Yahoo acquired Overture, also joined Microsoft and will be serving as an architect for the Microsoft Search platform and infrastructure.
Microsoft is getting aggressive, I wonder if we’ll see some bigger names and other execs moving over to Ballmer’s Bing project throughout the summer.
