Baidu Appoints Microsoft Veteran Qi Lu as Group President and COO

Executive Summary

• aidu has appointed former Microsoft executive Dr. Qi Lu to be its Group President and COO, and to oversee the Chinese search giant’s business, with immediate effect.
• As COO, Dr. Lu is responsible for maintaining the dominance of Baidu’s advertising and search-engine business, and spearhead the company’s initiatives on artificial intelligence (AI). Baidu’s core search and advertising business has been negatively impacted following new regulations released in 2Q16.
• Prior to joining Baidu, Dr. Lu served as Executive Vice President of the Applications and Service Group in Microsoft, where, until October 7, 2016, he led the company’s work on the Bing search engine, Skype and Microsoft Office.