A few years back, Microsoft was frequently in the spotlight for all the top talent leaving the company, as exemplified by a high-profile legal battle over executive Kai-Fu Lee's decision to leave the Redmond company for Google in 2005. But nowadays, the company is more likely to be in the news for poaching executives and engineers from its rivals -- and particularly from Yahoo.
The latest example is today's news that Yahoo vice president Kevin Timmons is joining Microsoft to head up its data-center services team. As illustrated in the chart above, he's the latest in a series of former Yahoo executives to join the Redmond company since Microsoft failed in its bid to acquire Yahoo last year.
Those are just the ones that have been publicly reported. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in March that the company had hired about 10 key technologists from Yahoo.
Of course, the revolving door spins both ways. For example, Mike Manos, general manager of the company's data center unit, left the company in April for Digital Realty Trust, creating the leadership gap that Timmons has now filled. Yahoo has also managed to land some former Microsoft executives itself. And James Whittaker, a respected software testing expert, left Microsoft for Google earlier this month.
But that pales in comparison to the number of defections from Microsoft to Google in the Seattle region a few years ago.
And overall, it appears that Microsoft has been more than holding its own in the battle for talent over the past year, particularly in the online arena. The question now is whether the company can successfully leverage all those hires to significantly improve its market position in Internet search, cloud computing and other key Internet markets.
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