Microsoft Veteran Will Help Run Chinese Baidu

Baidu has appointed former Microsoft executive Qi Lu its group president and COO, granting the software industry veteran oversight over all aspects of the Chinese search giant’s business from sales to technology development, according to Bloomberg. Lu, an architect of Satya Nadella’s strategy for artificial intelligence and bots at Microsoft, will take up his new post with immediate effect, Baidu said in an e-mailed statement.

Every Baidu business unit head will report to Lu, a respected technologist who ran the Office and search groups during his tenure at Microsoft. He now shoulders responsibility for steering Baidu toward its next phase of growth. China’s largest search engine and its billionaire founder, Robin Li, is seeking to refocus on enhancing search with AI and other technologies, as rivals such as Alibaba muscle in on its internet-advertising business.

Lu’s tenure at Microsoft overlapped with that of Steve Ballmer, whose stewardship of the company has been criticized for missing some of the biggest trends in technology, including social media and mobile. Its Bing search engine, which Lu helped develop, never managed to make much headway against Google’s.

The executive departed the U.S. software company last year for health reasons. Baidu itself is coming off a turbulent year, when a scandal involving online medical ads prompted tighter government restrictions that constricted its ad business, while an attempt to sell off video-streaming unit iQiyi to a consortium led by Li collapsed after investor protests.

Li has now flagged AI as the next key profit driver for the business. Lu, who holds more than 40 U.S. patents, joins as Baidu focuses on research into advanced technologies such as AI and autonomous cars.“To achieve our goals, especially in artificial intelligence, which is a key strategic focus for the next decade, we will need to continue attracting the best global talent,“ Li said. “With Dr. Lu on board, we are confident that our strategy will be executed smoothly and Baidu will become a world-class technology company and global leader in AI.“

By working with speaker-maker Harman, Baidu wants to create a smart device that, like Amazon’s Echo, can understand spoken commands and order food or summon cars. The Chinese search giant is also trying to exert its own influence on the rapidly deepening field. It released its “PaddlePaddle“ software on GitHub, letting AI enthusiasts freely make use of the development tools.