REDMOND, Washington, December 4 /PRNewswire/ --

- Yahoo! veteran to oversee Internet offerings for consumers, advertisers 
and publishers.

Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dr. Qi Lu will join the company as
president of the Online Services Group. Dr. Lu will lead Microsoft's efforts
in search and online advertising and all the company's online information and
communications services. Dr. Lu will report to Microsoft Chief Executive
Officer Steve Ballmer.

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Lu most recently served as executive vice president of Engineering for
the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo!, where he was
responsible for development efforts around Yahoo!'s Web search and
monetization platforms. Dr. Lu left Yahoo! in August 2008 after 10 years of
service.

"I am tremendously excited to welcome Qi to Microsoft," Ballmer said.
"Dr. Lu's deep technical expertise, leadership capabilities and hard-working
mentality are well-known in the technology industry, and Microsoft will
benefit from his addition to our executive management team."

"I am genuinely excited about the opportunities ahead for Microsoft to
make an enormous impact on the online industry," Dr. Lu said. "Microsoft has
built a great foundation for its search and advertising technologies and put
an amazing team of researchers and engineers in place to drive the next wave
of innovation in online services. I'm looking forward to working with them to
help transform the way people and businesses use the Internet to find and
share information."

Before his most recent role at Yahoo!, Lu was vice president of
engineering responsible for the technology development of Yahoo!'s Search and
Marketplace business unit, which includes the company's search, e-commerce,
and local listings of businesses and products.

Before joining Yahoo! in 1998, Dr. Lu was a Research Staff Member at IBM
Almaden Research Center. Before IBM, Dr. Lu worked at Carnegie Mellon
University as a Research Associate, and at Fudan University in China as a
faculty member. Dr. Lu holds 20 U.S. patents, and received his bachelor of
science and master of science in computer science from Fudan University and
his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Lu's first day at Microsoft will be Jan. 5, 2009. In his role running the
Online Services Group, he will oversee several groups including the
Advertiser & Publisher Solutions business, managed by Scott Howe who was
promoted to corporate vice president; the Online Audience business, managed
by Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi; OSG Research & Development, managed by
Senior Vice President Satya Nadella; and OSG Finance, managed by Rik van der
Kooi who was promoted to corporate vice president.

With the successful integration of aQuantive now complete, Brian
McAndrews, former CEO of aQuantive and senior vice president of Microsoft's
Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group, has decided to transition out of
Microsoft, and will do so over the next several months, serving in a
consultative capacity to Steve Ballmer and Qi Lu during that time.

"Brian McAndrews built a world-class business for advertisers and
publishers and led the successful integration of aQuantive into Microsoft,
setting the foundation for our next phase of growth," Ballmer said. "While I
am sorry to see Brian leave the company, I respect and understand his
decision and wish him nothing but the best in the future."

"I also want to congratulate Scott and Rik on their well-deserved
promotions and look forward to their leadership in the Online Services Group
alongside Qi, Yusuf and Satya," Ballmer said.

As part of today's announcement, several teams will move to further align
resources. The field sales organizations in the Online Services Group will
move to Microsoft's centralized Sales, Marketing and Services Group led by
chief operating officer Kevin Turner. This group, called Consumer & Online,
will be led by Corporate Vice President Darren Huston and will include the
Global Advertising Sales and Services organization, led by vice president
Bill Shaughnessy.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.