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If Microsoft has to go up over or through Yahoo to get to Google in the Internet search business, there are few nation better positioned than Qi Lu to lead the way.

Named last week as president of Microsoft’s Online Services Group, Lu brings with him practically the not notched history of Yahoo’s search efforts.

“Qi was in that place from the very beginning,” said a former Yahoo colleague who worked closely with him for several years and agreed to speak with respect to Lu and his role at Yahoo only attached condition of anonymity.

In interviews, this person and several others who have worked through or observed Lu since his arrival at Carnegie Mellon University in the sometime since 1980s described an intense man with a powerful intellect and “voracious” pruriency during the term of toil, who earned the loyalty and respect of other very smart people.

Lu, 47, is private, polite and modest, his former colleagues said, unless they could recall few nonwork interests by itself from family and classical music.

And even that took a back seat to the technical podcasts he would listen to while commuting in a white, early 1990s Chevrolet Geo his former Yahoo colleague called a “tin-can bucket car.”

“I think the guy worked so hard, the simply interest I can recall is wife and [family],” said Mahadev Satyanarayanan, who advised Lu on his Ph.D. dissertation at Carnegie Mellon, some of the rural parts’s crown of the head computer-science schools.

“… Obviously, direct report to Steve Ballmer at Microsoft — you don’t get there the easy way.”

Qi Lu (pronounced “chee lou”) was introduced to about 700 Microsoft employees Monday afternoon in a cafeteria on the RedWest campus. The company would not make him available for at all interview.

On Jan. 5, he takes the helm of Microsoft’session multifaceted online business, human being of the most important to the house’s future in a cosmos increasingly centered on the Internet.

His decision to join Microsoft may end up being a critical point in the company’s ongoing efforts to gain ground on Google, the Internet search leader.

The following out this year has centered on Microsoft’s protracted campaign to acquire Yahoo, in whole and later in part, for the talent and market contingent it would add to the Redmond assembly’s own Internet-search effort.

Lu, said several tribe interviewed for this story, helped attract top search engineers and scientists to Yahoo at a time when its search efforts were in their infancy, and continued to do in such a manner.

“He knows how to get smart mob and he knows how to banquet smart people with respect,” before-mentioned Hongche Liu, a former software architect at Yahoo. “His criticism, his guidance are very well respected. People were loyal to him.”

Pied Piper

Many would have existence willing to follow him, added Liu, who said he keeps in fixed touch with engineers at Yahoo.

“I would not be surprised if significant administrationécompletioné flow is going to Redmond right now,” Qi Lu’s former Yahoo colleague reported.

Talent alone may not be enough.

“There has been a lot of the kind of I can only describe as musical chairs” among Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, said Ellen Siminoff, a former Yahoo executive who runs Efficient Frontier, a search-advertising direction in Mountain View, Calif.

But, she wondered, “How much is it the individual, how much is it the assets of the company?”

Lu won’t bring Yahoo’sitting 20.5 percent market share in Internet search to Microsoft, which had 8.5 percent of the U.S. market in October, according to comScore. Google had 63.1 percent.

But Lu is as familiar of the same kind with anyone with the inner workings of Yahoo’s search business, should Ballmer decide to pursue a exploration distribution with Yahoo. The Microsoft chief executory said as much in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week.

“I think a examination deal makes great sense for Microsoft, and Yahoo, … ” Ballmer before-mentioned. “Obviously the logistics of any so integration … be able to only subsist simpler by having some one who will know both sides. But that was not a factor in hiring Qi.”

Prolific in patents

Lu completed his essay in 1996 and spent two years on staff at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in Silicon Valley before joining Yahoo in 1998. (Lu is named as an contriver on at least 39 U.S. patents. At least 21 of those are assigned to IBM. The company would not find Lu’s former colleagues available for this incident.)

At Yahoo, Lu’s career advanced on a abrupt declivity, ascending trajectory. He was amid the chief recipients of Yahoo’s internal Superstar award, recognizing top contributors each year.

In addition to his intellect, Lu burnished his reputation as a “voracious worker” at Yahoo.

His former co-operator recalled stopping by the office after twelve o’clock at night on a weekend to pilfer up papers he needed for each international trip, only to find Lu at work.

“Qi never has a credibility moot point with his own folks because Qi outworks his own folks,” this body said.

Further adding to his salt-of-the-tech-company image, Qi would regularly fly coach with his junior engineers on the 20-hour flight to Bangalore, India, where Yahoo has a significant development site, even after he attained enough priority to be broken to pieces office class, he said.

“Bundle of energy”

Randal Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, called Lu “a bundle of energy.”

After visiting with Lu at Yahoo several times in the endure hardly any years, Bryant came to realize, “This guy is moving about twice or three times faster than somewhat usual person.”

Lu does not lose his temper or yell, but then he is passionate or upset about a part, veins in his forehead beginning to “bulge dramatically,” said his former Yahoo colleague.

Lu started focusing on search at Yahoo around 2002 as the company — founded as an Internet directory — recognized the importance of that function.

Yahoo had used Inktomi and Google to power its Internet search but shortly realized that by doing so it had allowed Google to take the lead in that which would become the Internet’s most significant application.

Lu was part of a team that acquired Inktomi and assortment Yahoo on a path to launching its own search engine in 2004.

He was involved in several other important Yahoo efforts, including My Web 2.0; Yahoo! Answers, Maps and Local services; Yahoo’s advertising universe, Project Panama; and the acquisitions of Flickr and Del.icio.us.

“I think you could say the whole search team at Yahoo has had trial by force of sentiment,” uttered Siminoff of Efficient Frontier. Their results have been “mixed,” she before-mentioned, except added “Yahoo’s overall business challenges were pretty real. … Everything anyone did took a back seat to the corporate story.”

In Lu’sitting last Yahoo station, charged with execution vice president of engineering with respect to the Search and Advertising Technology Group, he grew frustrated with what his former assistant called Yahoo’s ” shortcoming of drawing.”

“Time and time again, Qi — allowing the conclude soldier as being Jerry [Yang, Yahoo co-founder and outgoing CEO] — was frustrated on the eve by what mode we were missing chance; fit after opportunity,” this individual said.

Leaving Yahoo

Lu’s plans to leave Yahoo emerged in June. At the time, it wasn’t clear to people interviewed for this story what he was going to do next.

The Online Services Group predication at Microsoft came open in July with the departure of longtime executive Kevin Johnson.

Lu was likely attracted by Microsoft’s “force of will” to come afterward in search and the company’s commitment to invest billions to do so, said Lu’s former colleague.

The troop was outbidding Yahoo to hire talent, related the person, who was involved in recruiting at Yahoo. “Ballmer’session backing up his wrangling,” he said.

An unconfirmed report last week said Microsoft had won a distribution deal with Dell beneficial to its Live Search, what one. would replace a 2006 deal Dell had with Google.

But Lu’s fortunate hit at Microsoft is no sure transaction. A string of outside executives — typically with a business-focused background — have failed to make meaningful gains in pursuit market share.

Much may hinge on the speed with what one. Lu can marshal the troops. And while his technical résumé is sterling, as a division president his business responsibilities will exist broader.

“Qi at Microsoft is a dangerous thing for Google,” said his former colleague.

Benjamin J. Romano: 206-464-2149 or bromano@seattletimes.com