Nadella used to be a senior vice president, and was previously in charge of the Online Services Division.  That made him responsible for some very important things, as a Microsoft statement called Nadella "instrumental in leading the technical efforts for several critical milestones such as the launch of Bing, new releases of MSN, and the integration of Yahoo! across Bing and adCenter."

So it’s safe to assume that Microsoft remains more than pleased with how Bing’s doing.  Nadella’s promotion amounts to much more than a new office and title.

Indeed, after spending 19 years with the company, Microsoft indicated, "Nadella will oversee the overall strategy, engineering, marketing and product development for Microsoft’s server, tools and cloud platform efforts.  This includes developing the technology road map and vision to drive adoption of the company’s products, tools and services, and delivering the company’s next generation of cloud solutions for business customers."

Nadella’s replacing Bob Muglia, who should help him make the transition before leaving Microsoft this summer.

Nadella said, "I see great opportunity for Microsoft to grow the business and also lead the way in the transformation of enterprise IT.  I’m excited to work with such a high-caliber team to chart the path for our continued success today and growth in the future."

"Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days," wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of research and development for Microsoft’s online services division in an internal memo.

Satya Nadella

The memo was first made public on All Things Digital.

Kumo in Japanese means "cloud" or "spider" and is the current codename for the internal test, but it is not known if Microsoft will keep the name.

"In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes, Nadella wrote.

"These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don’t find what they need from search today. We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks."

While being tested, Kumo’s features will vary by country, according to the internal memo and results will be organized in a way to save time.

"An explorer pane on the left side of results pages will give you access to tools that help you with your tasks," wrote Nadella. " Other features like single session history and hover preview help accomplish more in search sessions."

Microsoft is also testing a new search site called Viveri, which aims to offer better search results from vertical search engines. Viveri is expected to launch sometime this summer.

(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)

Nadella summed up both his department’s direction and the main points of his speech by stating that no one performs searches in isolation.  Searches are performed in the context of a task (either implicit or explicit), according to Nadella, and Microsoft is doing its best to respond to these situations.

A search for [flight to Las Vegas], for example, yields results from Live Search Farecast, a tool that’s in beta.  Or you can search for [canon digital camera] and see both product results and some buying guides.

"Task completion is going to become the next measure of relevance," claimed Nadella.  And as for how Microsoft’s going to recognize tasks in the first place, its acquisition of Powerset may well figure into the matter.  The SVP said, "Going forward we think semantics are going to play a crucial role."

On other fronts, Microsoft intends to simplify key tasks, and has worked on video and image search (with pictures from Virtual Earth being pulled into the latter).  It may even innovate in terms of a business model, although relevant details were lacking.

Microsoft hasn’t entirely accepted its backseat to Google and Yahoo, either.  Nadella stated, "As far as we are concerned, the race for core relevance is on."

Nadella spoke on how Microsoft approaches search and how the company intends to shape trends in search development and how they intend to exploit them.

Comments

“Microsoft: What Google Killer?”

But we knew that already. Nonetheless, ComputerWorld’s Nancy Gohring captured this Nadella sound bite regarding rumors the Beast of Redmond had a new search engine it was keeping under wraps:

When they get it done, I hope they’ll send me a link to it so I’ll know about it.

Hmmm.

Nadella said they’d continue to tweak the old one, which pulled itself to third place rather quickly and stayed there. Like Yahoo, perhaps Microsoft is satisfied with its position online – it is after all pulling in double the share of the nearest competitor down the list.

Or maybe, if we wanted to stretch that out a bit, Nadella’s words point a sharp finger at his predecessors, two of which left somewhat quickly. One of them, as our David Utter notes, left for a nonprofit gig.

"That’s not a good sign," he writes, "when the person charged with taking on the competition gets a good look at the opponent’s ship of the line and decides he’s better off in a rowboat."

Nice one, Dave.

Live Search Sails With New Captain

The Search and Ad Platform puts Live Search and adCenter together to focus on the common enemy: anyone who is taking money in search advertising.

Google ranks first and foremost in that list. Figures from comScore for February’s US search engine rankings showed Google gobbling up more than 48 percent of the market. Microsoft sites dipped to 10.5 percent for the same month.

If Microsoft’s fortunes improve, Satya Nadella could be the guy steering the company’s search flagship to the big X on the treasure map. Reuters noted how Nadella, a long-time Microsoft veteran, had picked up the leadership position for the new group.

The change comes as former head of search Chris Payne announced a few weeks ago he planned to ditch Microsoft in favor of launching a non-search startup company. That’s not a good sign, when the person charged with taking on the competition gets a good look at the opponent’s ship of the line and decides he’s better off in a rowboat.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley wrote that Nadella had formerly led Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP software lines. Nadella’s gain in the reorganization is senior VP Steven Sinofsky’s loss, as Live Search formerly reported to him.

Moving search and ads together at Microsoft seems to make sense. Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said in Foley’s report, “I think it makes perfect sense to consolidate adCenter and Web search, and I’m only surprised it took Microsoft so long to do so.”

It could be that Microsoft wanted to find the right person for the task. Nadella has worked on a variety of technologies in Microsoft, but his listed experience won’t make anyone think he’s the search industry equivalent of Russell Crowe’s Lucky Jack when it comes to chasing down Google’s vessel of profits.