Qi Lu, President of Online Services at Microsoft talked with Xconomy on wide range of matters right from his personal and career experience at Microsoft to future of web. Here are some key points from his long interview,
- “The Web has far outgrown its heritage. It’s a full-blown digital society.”
- On Local deals: Google is built around half a million businesses (advertisers), Groupon is built around “the next 10 million businesses trying to reach customers digitally.”
- Facebook is key to Microsoft’s future on web. People make decisions in “a digital version of the world” by the help from Facebook.
- Mobile is the next big oppurtunity to tap on.
- On his personal carreer, “For me personally, one thing I bring with me is a relentless quest for excellence. It may take time, it may take a long journey, but anything we decide to do, we will settle for nothing short of being the very best. It’s a reflection on the personal level of what I would like to pursue. “
- Critics slam Microsoft as slow- ” If you go overly fast, you’re not actually able to be in tune. The key thing is you keep the rhythm that’s in harmony; you don’t want to spin unnaturally faster than the natural rhythm. Different businesses will have different innate rhythms. For all the businesses in the area I’m responsible for at Microsoft, they all have different rhythms. I’m responsible for Microsoft’s data centers, networks, some of the key infrastructure; the innate rhythm for those segments of development is actually much longer cycles. That’s how the whole value chain holds.”
- On how MS is preparing for the future of the web- ” Storage and Compute are important factors, Once you have strong infrastructure and develop enabling capabilities, over a period of time you will have the foundation of lifting the rate of heartbeat in the key areas. That’s important.”
- On Microsoft’s evolving online efforts relative to its overall business strategy- “I’ll pick one key pivot which is our overarching focus: Preparing a differentiated consumer experience across Microsoft’s key product lines. For Microsoft to go forward, our fundamental focus is on bringing in our company’s assets and driving innovations across our company’s product lines. By combining all those experiences in a coherent, integrated manner, we offer differentiated and very compelling experiences to our users.”
- On Google Vs Bing- Pleased with the efforts so far and consumers are mostly positive on the differentiated experience. “It’s a long journey. We know we have gaps. We know we have many areas where we still have barriers to overcome. We fully understand that this is going to take time, dedication, deep commitments, but for the long term we are absolutely confident, we have deep faith in our ability to compete, and to compete very well. “
- How committed is Microsoft to its long term vision- “One thing I’ve learned at Microsoft, in my two years and five months, is the company’s culture and heritage of being tenacious and having the patience and the willingness for investing for the longevity. This has been abundantly clear. Technological breakthroughs are profoundly one of the key driving forces in how our society and overall [civilization] is evolving and improving. So, with that as the larger context, I do think Microsoft has huge potential, given the talent base we have and our market footprint. We are aware of our challenges, no doubt.
He cited many Microsoft’s products such as Bing, Windows Phone,etc,. which were executed on the vision of future web. Its such a good interview, so if you have some time to spare read it at Xconomy.