The war of words has gone into full effect as Google begins their “vigorous” defense against Microsoft’s legal actions over the defection of Dr. Kai-fu Lee. According to Google’s team, Microsoft is just saber rattling, intimidating its employees as it claims ownership of all things search.
“In a shocking display of hubris, Microsoft has rushed into court claiming the entire field of search as its own,” Google’s team said in court documents filed in a King County court.
The search giant dismissed Microsoft’s assertions, saying the lawsuit was an attempt “to scare other Microsoft employees into remaining at the company.”
Google paints a picture of an insecure software giant that was itching for a fight and found their reason.
The drama began last week when a Microsoft engineer, after being unable to attain a position in his native country, China, approached Google to head up its new research and development center in Beijing.
Though Dr. Lee, 43, was working on speech recognition technology at the time of his departure, he was once a principle architect of Microsoft’s search engine, MSN, and was also in charge of the company’s Chinese research center.
Microsoft cried foul after Lee accepted the position as President of Google China, saying Lee was in violation of a non-compete contractual agreement barring him from working similar jobs for direct competitors for one year.
Microsoft also said Lee had intimate knowledge of the company’s strategies and trade secrets.
Google fired back, asking a Seattle judge to dismiss the case.
“In truth, Kai-Fu Lee’s work for Microsoft had only the most tangential connection to search and no connection whatsoever to Google’s work in this space,” the Mountain View, Calif.-based company said.
The filings go on to claim that Microsoft was feeling increasingly froggy as a result of the fear of losing more employees to Google, and was looking for a reason to sue the search engine company as part of a corporate litigation strategy.
Google cites an alleged meeting between chairman Bill Gates and Lee on July 15.
“Kai-Fu, Steve (Ballmer) is definitely going to sue you and Google over this. He has been looking for something like this, someone at a VP level to go to Google. We need to do this to stop Google.”
Microsoft acknowledged, at least, that Google is a huge concern by noting that Lee attended a confidential executive meeting in March entitled, “The Google Challenge.”
This was noted to emphasize their claims that Lee as intimate knowledge of Microsoft’s business strategy and trade secrets.
“In short, Dr. Lee was recently handed Microsoft’s entire Google competition ‘playbook,”‘ Microsoft said.
Google stuck to its guns by denying that Lee’s role at Microsoft had anything to do with the search industry as he was working primarily with speech technology
