The executive who led Google's expansion in China after being hired away from Microsoft following a high-profile court battle is leaving to start his own business, the US search engine announced yesterday.
Kai-Fu Lee will step down as president of Google Greater China in mid-September, the company said. It said he would se up a new venture in Beijing but gave no other details.
Lee was hired by Google in 2004 and oversaw development of services meant to help the search giant expand its share of China's search market, which is dominated by local rival Baidu.
Google hasadded market share but trails Baidu, which has 61.6 per cent of search traffic, while Google has 29.1 per cent, according to Analysys International, a technoogy research firm.
Google said Boon-Lock Yeo, director of its Shnghai engineering office, would take over Lee's engineering responsibilities, John Liu, who leads its Greater China sales team, is to assume his business and operational responsibilites.
Lee worked for Microsoft from 2000 to 2004 and helped develop its MSN Internet search technology, including desktop search sofetware rivalling Google's.
He left to lead Google's China operation fter being offered a $10-million (Bt340 million) compensation pack age.
Microsoft sued Lee and Google, conending his job would violate a non-compete agreenemtn the prohibited him from doing similar work for a rival for one year. Microsoft also accused lLee of using indiderinformantion to get job at Google.
Google countered with its own lawsuit against Microsoft and the companies later reached a settlement, the details of which were not released.
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