Former Microsoft executive temporarily barred from joining Google

07/29/05 - newratings.com

NEW YORK, July 29 (newratings.com) – King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez has granted a temporary restraining order to prohibit Kai-Fu Lee, a former top level executive at Microsoft (MSFT), from joining rival Google (GOOG).

Google recently hired Kai-Fu Lee to head its research and development centre in China. Lee's most recent position in Microsoft was vice-president at the company's servers and tools division, working on speech recognition software. He has earlier played a key role in creating Microsoft's research centre in Beijing and has also worked with the MSN search unit. Google, which described Microsoft's lawsuit as "a shocking display of hubris," said that the temporary restraining order is nothing but a ruling to maintain status quo. Google and Lee said that he had only limited involvement in Microsoft's Chinese operations and that he is not an expert in search engine technology.