Foley quotes from an internal memo Nadella sent Tuesday, which she gained access to:

With the Search team’s exit from planning complete, Dane Glasgow has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue non-profit interests and spend time with his family before taking on a new entrepreneurial challenge. Dane has worked in the services business at Microsoft for nearly 8 years, joining the company in 1999 through the acquisition of Jump Networks. During his time at Microsoft, Dane has worked on large scale services like Hotmail and Search as well as clients such as our Toolbar and Gadgets platform. Dane helped launch our Windows Desktop Search offering, worked to deliver our first release of Windows Live, and has been a strong advocate for incubation within the company. I thank Dane for his contributions, and wish him all the best in his future pursuits.

I am working with my leadership team and Dane’s existing directs to identify the right successor. During this time, Dane’s team will report directly to me. I have asked Ramez Naam to step in as the interim Director to ensure we streamline decision making and making sure that we stay on track with our Fall Release roadmap.”

Comments

Tag:

Live Search Exec Ejects

Satya Nadella has to be wondering if he will be flying solo as the new head of Microsoft’s search efforts. Chris Payne and Blake Irving both announced plans to depart Microsoft previously.

Now, Glasgow has joined the exit queue. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley pulled up the details about Dane Glasgow courtesy of an internal Microsoft email that found its way to her inbox; Nadella sent the message on April 24 to employees:

With the Search team’s exit from planning complete, Dane Glasgow has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue non-profit interests and spend time with his family before taking on a new entrepreneurial challenge….

Dane helped launch our Windows Desktop Search offering, worked to deliver our first release of Windows Live, and has been a strong advocate for incubation within the company.

It’s just not going to be Glasgow doing the incubating from now on. Foley said Glasgow will leave the Redmond empire for good on April 27.

We have to wonder why Microsoft has been shedding people from an initiative that for all intents and purposes should be an energetic competitive challenge in the search market. Google owns the dominant position in search, and Yahoo has mostly held serve following Google, while Microsoft trails them both.

Perhaps the challenge is just too daunting, like taking on GnuBG in backgammon after breezing through the instructions one time. Of course, you can’t get better unless you play the best; Microsoft needs people who have that attitude.