Microsoft published a Q&A with Qi Lu, who was hired as president of Microsoft’s Online Services Group.

“””””Lu will lead Microsoft’s efforts to expand and strengthen its search and online advertising efforts.

Lu comes to Microsoft four months after leaving Yahoo!, where he most recently held the position of executive vice president of Engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group.””

Some of the more interesting quotes in the release:

“””the Web as a platform for publishing all sorts of content. There is more and more rich and fresh content, and more engaging social content. So, there is a lot more material to work with. If we’re able to understand user intent better, and combine that with the richer content available out there, we will be able to produce a very engaging search experience””””

“””I think there is a genuine opportunity to take our search products to the next level”””

“”””The second opportunity is to continue building a very powerful advertising platform. Microsoft has made a series of strategic acquisitions, and also built a bunch of internal technologies and products. The key is to put all those assets together to build powerful, highly scalable advertising platforms. The advertising we see today will be very different in the future because of new platforms for it. Ads will be truly relevant and useful, and the experience will be compelling.””

Looks like Microsoft is looking to make a run at Google, with or without Yahoo.

Check out the full interview.