A wise man once told me, “Engineers don’t lie.” So when I wanted to find out the real story behind Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, I went to Harry Shum. Shum is Microsoft’s vice president of search product development. He runs the engineering team responsible for Bing, among other duties. He was formerly the managing director of Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, and he’s a Microsoft distinguished engineer. A few weeks ago, he granted a rare in-depth interview about all things Bing. He also spoke publicly about the search effort at this week’s Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, WA.

What’s most striking about Bing is how well it has been received so far—especially compared to other recent high-profile Microsoft products (Windows Vista comes to mind). Bing, which was launched in full last month along with a serious marketing effort, has received mostly positive reviews, and has spurred a modest but significant increase in Microsoft’s market share in Web search—8.4 percent in June, up from 8 percent in May, according to comScore.

So a lot has already been written about it, of course. But I wanted to hear from Bing’s head of engineering about the deeper process of building the software, the technology behind it, and the culture of the search group within Microsoft—and, crucially, how its approach is different from other product groups in the company, in terms of the mindset of its engineers. There may be some important lessons in product innovation here.

Shum began with some historical context. Microsoft has been working on its search product for about six years, he said, while Google has been on the case for more than twice as long. Back in the 1990s, top Microsoft researchers like Eric Horvitz and Nathan Myhrvold talked about building a search engine and crawling the whole Web (only tens of millions of pages back then) with just a few dozen machines. But in terms of product development, Microsoft freely admits it came to search late and remains a heavy underdog in the battle for market share. “The competition is here, and we recognize and respect that,” says Shum, who took over the search team in the fall of 2007.

Indeed, Bing is a new opportunity in a long line of Microsoft search engines—MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search. “We really believe Bing represents a dramatic improvement in search,” Shum says. “It goes beyond a search engine. We claim Bing is a decision engine. It’s a tool to help users make everyday decisions.”

Whether you’re trying to buy a pair of shoes for a particular occasion, or looking up the local weather to decide how to dress, or tracking a package online, Bing tries to figure out your … Next Page »

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If there was an “ah-ha!” moment for Huya Bioscience International, it occurred in 2004, when founder Mireille Gingras was working as a consultant for mid-size biotech companies.

“I was looking for opportunities for in-licensing compounds in China when I found a very interesting drug for Alzheimer’s,” Gingras recalls. The potential for the Chinese drug in the United States and elsewhere was big, but Gingras says she saw an even bigger business opportunity in licensing the legions of drug candidates under development in China.

She ran with her idea, and started Huya at a time when the global pharmaceutical industry faces a pressing need for new drug compounds. Gingras says Huya now has “hundreds” of in-licensed Chinese compounds in its portfolio, which includes a spectrum of pre-clinical and clinical drug candidates in such therapeutic areas as oncology, neurology, immunology, and hematology.

“It’s a whole new source for drugs, and the pharmaceutical companies are very excited about this,” says Jan Tuttleman, Huya’s vice president of marketing. “It’s like a whole new oil field that we’ve found.”

The company has a multi-faceted strategy for capitalizing on this drug-development gusher. Huya plans to in-license some prospective drugs from China and bring … Next Page »

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The Massachusetts Department of Housing and Economic Development is opening a new office in Beijing, the agency said today in a statement. The office, led by Daniel Ding, will maintain a satellite contact office in Shanghai that previously had been shared with four other states. Ding will concentrate on helping Massachusetts companies take advantage of opportunities in the growing Chinese economy, and foster relationships with government officials, the agency said.

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Last Friday we reported that three distinguished Microsoft employees, all formerly of the firm’s Beijing research lab (Microsoft Research Asia), were slated to run with the Olympic torch in the lead-up to the Summer Games. On Saturday, we learned that Microsoft search VP Harry Shum’s run in Lhasa, Tibet, went off without a hitch, and that the other two are upcoming. Now we’ve learned that Kai-Fu Lee, the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia—and currently the founding president of Google China—beat them all to it, by serving as a torchbearer in Shanghai the last week of May.

A bit of backstory: Lee was a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) vice president in Redmond from 2000 to 2005 before defecting to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), which spawned an infamous non-compete lawsuit that was settled out of court in December 2005. Before all that, Lee was a close friend and mentor to the Microsoft research guys; now he’s a competitor. It’s hard to say whether running with the torch earlier or later is the greater honor, though—either way it’s a big deal. (Ya-Qin Zhang, VP and chairman of Microsoft’s China R&D Group, is scheduled to run with the torch on the final leg of the relay, in Beijing.)

The torch business isn’t just in good fun—it’s also symbolic of the global competition between the tech giants. The game within the game. Whether it’s hiring talent, selling ads, or global branding, whether it’s Seattle or Shanghai, the Bay Area or Beijing, these guys will do almost anything to one-up one another. And we’ll be watching closely to see who brings home more of the real gold from China.

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As the Olympic torch wends its way towards Beijing for the start of the Summer Games, you’d be interested to know that it has ties to the local tech community. It turns out that 12 people from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) were invited to be torchbearers. Among them are three guys that Bob and I know well. Harry Shum, a VP in Redmond in charge of Microsoft’s search business, will run with the torch this weekend in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. HongJiang Zhang, managing director of Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Center in Beijing, will run next week in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province in central China. And Ya-Qin Zhang, VP and chairman of Microsoft’s China R&D Group, will be part of the final anchor relay in Beijing on August 8, the day of the opening ceremony.

No doubt these three were selected because of their long-standing ties to academic, business, and government officials in Beijing. From 1998 to 2003, they were instrumental in building Microsoft Research Asia into a powerhouse that does a lot of academic outreach in China. (You can read all about them in this famous book). The torch running speaks to Microsoft’s continuing relationship-building in China, and makes us wonder whether Google, Yahoo, and other big tech companies are also involved.

Shum is scheduled to run with the torch in Lhasa on Saturday around 10:00 a.m. local time. He will be torchbearer #78, and you might even see him if there is TV coverage tonight. The 6.8-mile relay will begin at the Dalai Lama’s former summer palace and end on a hilltop at the Potala Palace, the traditional seat of Tibetan rulers. The run schedule has shifted around recently, probably because of the devastation from the earthquake in neighboring Sichuan province and security concerns stemming from the Tibetan riots in March (and more recent Olympic torch demonstrations around the world).

All in all, it’s a tense time to be on the streets of Lhasa. Gearing up for the event, the Associated Press reports that there are police on virtually every corner and riot troops in the town center. When we get an update, we’ll let you know…

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Having tackled the Super Bowl, Akamai Technologies is setting its sights on a more global stage—the summer Olympics in Beijing. Back in January, we reported that the Cambridge, MA-based company, which specializes in online content distribution and networking, was helping the New England Patriots and the NFL get ready for the biggest game of the year (turns out the Pats could have used more help with their offensive line and Tom Brady’s ankle).

Now Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) has announced that it is teaming up with New York-based The NewsMarket, an online video delivery and marketing firm, to enable journalists covering the summer games in China to view and download Olympic-related video clips more quickly and reliably than before. The NewsMarket, which has some 16,000 media subscribers across 193 countries, has set up a dedicated “Beijing 2008″ video channel: the company says it is already being used by the International Olympic Committee and companies like Adidas, Samsung, and Volkswagen (presumably for advertising).

The NewsMarket clearly needs Akamai’s technology for its Beijing channel to handle the huge demand for video of the summer games. Akamai, for its part, may see this not just as a good short-term deal, but also as a way to gain a larger footprint in China, which, according to Akamai’s recent “State of the Internet” report, will soon be connected to the United States by a new “Trans-Pacific Express” undersea cable carrying up to 5 terabits of data per second.

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