Google grabs top Microsoft exec for China lab
Microsoft sues, says Google not poaching by the code
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.
Worse, lawyer Burt told the Seattle Times, Google broke "a certain code of conduct in the technology industry" in which poaching companies come clean about their intentions.
But, as Sun Tzu might have said, given the stakes, why in the world would you expect that?
Make no mistake: Microsoft views Google as a serious competitor.
In remarks at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit on 18 July, Bill Gates had a telling exchange with Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, in which he put Google at top of mind.
When Microsoft opened the China R&D centre in November 1998, it said the centre would be devoted to long-term research in areas such as multimedia, internet technologies and speech recognition.
Much of the centre's work was oriented toward Dr Lee's special skill set, in particular "next-generation user interfaces" that included voice, expression and gesture recognition systems, something many have seen as key to spreading computer use to the general China population.
So, even though, as Microsoft has often said, the work of the China centre is more in 'edge' research than development, the centre is not a pie-in-the-sky kind of place.
And Microsoft, while not specifying how much it is spending on research in China, is very proud of the fact that it is spending $US7 billion a year on R&D, globally.
Google is, however, almost pure research -- and Dr Lee was apparently drawn to the place like a moth to a flame.
"It has always been my goal to make advanced technologies accessible and useful to every user, as well as to be part of the vibrant growth and innovation in China today," Dr Lee said in the Google announcement. "Joining Google uniquely enables me to pursue both of my passions and I look forward to returning to China to begin this exciting endeavor."
Less formally, he told the Seattle Times: "Everybody I talked to [at Google] really has an incredible passion and excitement," he said, describing the company as "a very collegiate environment in which I think I can really amplify the ideas I have."
And they have a high regard for him in China, as well.
Google quoted Gu Binglin, President of Beijing's Tsinghua University as saying: "Dr. Kai-Fu Lee possesses the perfect combination of technical brilliance, leadership excellence, and business savvy, and he cares deeply about the students and education in China."
Google responded to the Microsoft lawsuit rather dismissively, given the stakes.
"We have reviewed Microsoft's claims and they are completely without merit," the company said.
According to Siliconbeat, Google fired off a letter saying: "Google is focused on building the best place in the world for great innovators to work. We're thrilled to have Dr Lee on board at Google. We will defend vigorously against these meritless claims and will fully support Dr Lee."
According to the New York Times, Dr Lee had made it known he wanted to go back to China, but Microsoft was unable to offer him a leadership position there senior enough "to suit his desires."
Google got lucky, to take a phrase from its search engine interface.
The Google China R&D center will open in the third quarter of 2005, Google said, joining other R&D centres in Tokyo, Japan; Zurich, Switzerland; Bangalore, India; New York, New York; Santa Monica, California; Kirkland, Washington and its home base, Mountain View, California.
More on Dr Lee
According to Microsoft, Dr Lee was the president of Cosmo Software, the Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) multimedia software business unit, before coming to Microsoft.
Before that, he was vice president and general manager of Silicon Graphics' Web products division, responsible for several product lines and the company's corporate Web strategy.
Before joining SGI, Lee spent six years at Apple, most recently as vice president of the company's interactive media group, which developed QuickTime, QuickDraw 3D, QuickTime VR and PlainTalk speech technologies.
Prior to his position at Apple, he was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he developed the world's first speaker-independent continuous speech-recognition system.
While at Carnegie Mellon, Lee also developed the world-champion computer program that plays the game "Othello" and that defeated the human world champion in 1988.
Dr Lee earned his doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and holds a bachelor's in computer science with highest honors from Columbia University. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE.
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.
Worse, lawyer Burt told the Seattle Times, Google broke "a certain code of conduct in the technology industry" in which poaching companies come clean about their intentions.
But, as Sun Tzu might have said, given the stakes, why in the world would you expect that?
Make no mistake: Microsoft views Google as a serious competitor.
In remarks at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit on 18 July, Bill Gates had a telling exchange with Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, in which he put Google at top of mind.
When Microsoft opened the China R&D centre in November 1998, it said the centre would be devoted to long-term research in areas such as multimedia, internet technologies and speech recognition.
Much of the centre's work was oriented toward Dr Lee's special skill set, in particular "next-generation user interfaces" that included voice, expression and gesture recognition systems, something many have seen as key to spreading computer use to the general China population.
So, even though, as Microsoft has often said, the work of the China centre is more in 'edge' research than development, the centre is not a pie-in-the-sky kind of place.
And Microsoft, while not specifying how much it is spending on research in China, is very proud of the fact that it is spending $US7 billion a year on R&D, globally.
Google is, however, almost pure research -- and Dr Lee was apparently drawn to the place like a moth to a flame.
"It has always been my goal to make advanced technologies accessible and useful to every user, as well as to be part of the vibrant growth and innovation in China today," Dr Lee said in the Google announcement. "Joining Google uniquely enables me to pursue both of my passions and I look forward to returning to China to begin this exciting endeavor."
Less formally, he told the Seattle Times: "Everybody I talked to [at Google] really has an incredible passion and excitement," he said, describing the company as "a very collegiate environment in which I think I can really amplify the ideas I have."
And they have a high regard for him in China, as well.
Google quoted Gu Binglin, President of Beijing's Tsinghua University as saying: "Dr. Kai-Fu Lee possesses the perfect combination of technical brilliance, leadership excellence, and business savvy, and he cares deeply about the students and education in China."
Google responded to the Microsoft lawsuit rather dismissively, given the stakes.
"We have reviewed Microsoft's claims and they are completely without merit," the company said.
According to Siliconbeat, Google fired off a letter saying: "Google is focused on building the best place in the world for great innovators to work. We're thrilled to have Dr Lee on board at Google. We will defend vigorously against these meritless claims and will fully support Dr Lee."
According to the New York Times, Dr Lee had made it known he wanted to go back to China, but Microsoft was unable to offer him a leadership position there senior enough "to suit his desires."
Google got lucky, to take a phrase from its search engine interface.
The Google China R&D center will open in the third quarter of 2005, Google said, joining other R&D centres in Tokyo, Japan; Zurich, Switzerland; Bangalore, India; New York, New York; Santa Monica, California; Kirkland, Washington and its home base, Mountain View, California.
More on Dr Lee
According to Microsoft, Dr Lee was the president of Cosmo Software, the Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) multimedia software business unit, before coming to Microsoft.
Before that, he was vice president and general manager of Silicon Graphics' Web products division, responsible for several product lines and the company's corporate Web strategy.
Before joining SGI, Lee spent six years at Apple, most recently as vice president of the company's interactive media group, which developed QuickTime, QuickDraw 3D, QuickTime VR and PlainTalk speech technologies.
Prior to his position at Apple, he was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he developed the world's first speaker-independent continuous speech-recognition system.
While at Carnegie Mellon, Lee also developed the world-champion computer program that plays the game "Othello" and that defeated the human world champion in 1988.
Dr Lee earned his doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and holds a bachelor's in computer science with highest honors from Columbia University. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE.
posted by Scott Fish | 10:13 AM
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