Poaching of Microsoft's top China executive a coup for Baidu

Zhang Yaqin has long been identified with Microsoft on the mainland.

In 2007, Zhang took over Microsoft's mainland leadership role after Timothy Chen Yongzheng resigned as chief executive to join the National Basketball Association. Zhang stepped back to focus on his research duties after Simon Leung Lim-kin was appointed chief in 2009.

For Baidu, hiring Zhang as president for new business is a veritable coup. The distinguished scientist will likely give Baidu a greater profile in technological innovation as competition intensifies against mainland rivals Alibaba, the world's biggest e-commerce services provider, and Tencent, Asia's largest listed internet company.

At Microsoft, Zhang has long championed the mainland's ability to develop into a leading global market for so-called cloud computing services. Baidu also hired former Google executive Andrew Ng in May as the firm's new chief scientist in California.

Cloud computing allows companies and consumers to buy, lease, sell or distribute over the internet a vast range of software, business systems, data, storage and other digital resources. Such resources are hosted in data centres.

Baidu, which runs a vast network of data centres, also operates a fast-growing personal cloud storage service business with nearly 200 million users on the mainland.