Yusuf Mehdi, who reportedly is the " longest-running executive in Microsoft’s Online Services Division," (which houses Bing) is heading over to the company's Xbox division. Reasons for the shift aren't entirely clear. But Mehdi is a key executive for "OSD" and was instrumental in the creation and successful launch of Bing. According to the internal memo obtained by Geekwire, Mehdi and his tenure are described as follows: Yusuf has been involved with leading Microsoft Online Services businesses longer than anyone else on the OSD LT, and has been a pivotal leader at critical milestones of [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Video | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees

Microsoft announced they are now ready to move forward with transitioning over the search ad technology from Yahoo to Microsoft in the European regions. Microsoft said, the "European roll out is scheduled to begin with the UK, Ireland and France in the second quarter of 2012." Yahoo and Microsoft have already transitioned the search ad technology in the U.S. and Canada, as well as some other regions. But the transition scheduled slowed as revenue figures did not meet estimates and advertiser expectations were poor. Yahoo and Microsoft has completed the organic transition less than a [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Search Ads

It's perhaps one of the strangest product pitches I've heard. Asked on stage at Web 2.0 Summit by John Battelle about his Bing search engine, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer encouraged the audience to try Bing because, well, it's pretty much the same as Google. The Ballmer 70/15/15 Challenge "I would issue you all a kind of challenge to try any search you want on Bing and Google," Ballmer said, explaining that 70% of the time, there won't be any difference in the results, that 15% of the time, Bing will be better and 15% of the time, Google will be better. Now, if Ballmer had said that maybe [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: General | Microsoft: Mobile | Microsoft: Windows Phone

I swear, it's like watching the Titanic having run into that iceberg, as Bing and Yahoo try to figure out what to do with their sinking ships of search. Except that the Titanic was big, and Bing and Yahoo are like small -- and they haven't run into an iceberg. They're being run over by the search supercarrier SS Google. "Did we just bump something," yells Capt. Larry Page to his Googler crew. "No, full steam ahead!" yells back first mate Eric Schmidt. "There were some senators in the water, but I think I've handled them." As for the wreckage of the SS Bing and SS Yahoo that Google also plow [...]

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Despite making incremental gains in market share, Bing is still searching for the "secret sauce" that will help it challenge Google's dominance more quickly. That phrase -- "secret sauce" -- is how a CNN Money article explains what Microsoft thinks will ultimately set it apart from Google. The article describes a recent meeting in which Bing discussed its (latest) plan for growing its market share: At the company's financial analyst meeting in Anaheim, Calif., last week, Microsoft President of Online Services Qi Lu gave an impassioned speech about how Bing would improve search by "reorga [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues