WebProNews

The man over whom Microsoft and Google practically started a war in 2005 is now quitting that second company.  Kai-Fu Lee, the president of Google's operations in China, will leave his post sometime this month.

Lee first made headlines when he attempted to move from Microsoft to Google.  Microsoft sued Google, Google countersued, and after a fair amount of public unpleasantness, the two corporations reached a mysterious out-of-court settlement.

Then Lee's reign in China began.  It wasn't an entirely successful one, considering that Google's share of the Chinese search market is still only in the neighborhood of 20 percent.  But Eric Schmidt expressed his approval of Lee's efforts on several occasions, which counts for a lot.

And that brings us back to current events.  Lee is leaving Google to work on an unknown venture, and apparently gave the search giant enough notice to find some replacements.

Jessica E. Vascellaro reports, "Mr. Lee will be succeeded by two Google executives . . . .  Boon-Lock Yeo, currently director of Google's Shanghai engineering office, will run engineering for Google China.  John Liu, who currently leads Google's sales team in greater China, will assume Mr. Lee's business and operational responsibilities."