Microsoft News Tracker

Sumner Lemon at InfoWorld provides a final footnote to the acrimonious Kai-Fu Lee case where Microsoft had sued Google for hiring Lee, a former Microsoft executive:

After months of preparation, Google formally opened its Beijing research and development (R&D) center this week, the company said Thursday.

Google hopes the R&D center will house up to 150 engineers by the middle of this year, said Debbie Frost, a company spokeswoman. “We will hire as many people as meet our high standards,” she said.

The Beijing R&D lab is headed by Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft executive who now serves as co-president of Google China. For months, Lee has been touring China, speaking at universities and meeting engineers as part of an effort to recruit staff for the center.

Expectations are high for Lee and the Beijing lab. While Google has yet to determine what areas the center will focus on, CEO Eric Schmidt has said publicly that he expects the lab to one day house “thousands” of engineers and perhaps become the company’s largest R&D center outside the U.S.

With the imminent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintang to Bill Gates and Microsoft it brings back memories of early Microsoft missteps in their China policy that seem to be dissipating.