Last month, Yahoo SVP David Ku, who headed the company’s advertising products group, left the company. Yahoo has been hemorrhaging talent lately — including some high ranking executives — and Ku was an especially big loss because he’s been with the company since 2002. Now we’ve confirmed Ku’s next move: he’s joining Microsoft as Corporate Vice President, Online Services Division New Initiatives, effective October 29th, 2010.
We initially heard that Ku would be working directly on Bing (which is part of Microsoft’s’ Online Services Division) but a Microsoft spokesperson tell us that he’ll be involved with a range of initiatives across the division.
In addition to advertising experience, Ku has quite a bit of product experience as well: he was Yahoo’s VP Engineering, Search from April 2002 until December 2005. According to his LinkedIn profile, this included running Yahoo’s core search, social search, vertical search (images, video, shopping), Flickr, and more.
At Yahoo, Ku was replaced by Mark Morrissey who serves as SVP of Ad Platforms and Products (Yahoo consolidated its ad platforms under one exec).
Responsible for Advertising products and technology at Yahoo!, including display and search advertising, targeting, analytics, exchange, and convergence of search and display advertising.
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...
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