Rumored previously to be heading for a job at Tencent, Lu Qi is now confirmed to be making Baidu is his new home.
The Chinese search engine is making Lu its group president and chief operating officer, in charge of products, technology, sales, marketing and operations.
Lu was formerly global executive vice president at Microsoft, and he is a noted expert in artificial intelligence.
As a Microsoft veteran, Lu was responsible for business across productivity, communications, education, search and other information services, including Microsoft Office, Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Lync, Skype, Bing, Bing Apps, MSN and the Advertising platforms.
Before joining Microsoft, Lu spent ten years as a Yahoo! senior executive, including as the executive vice president overseeing the development of Yahoo!’s Web search and monetization platforms.