The Redmond giant made its next move. They are hiring Qi Lu, who was the executive VP of engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo. Starting January 5th 2009, Lu will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

It is now evident that Microsoft is all set to take up Live Services to the next level. Their nominal presence in the online advertising segment is becoming a threat to their future growth, well…atleast until now. Microsoft’s attempt to de-throne Google is now more serious than ever. But it should be noted that the software giant has one thing that very few company has…money, lots of it ! Now the only thing to watch out for is whether they are making good use of it, unlike what they did with Vista.