Microsoft exec allowed to join Google and staff China research facilities.

A Washington state court judge has ruled that former Microsoft research executive Kai-Fu Lee may join Google and open their China based research facilities. Google plans to open research centers in both Beijing and Shanghai in the near future. The ruling precludes Lee from working on any product or service that relies on confidential information tied to search, natural language processing and speech recognition that he obtained while working for Microsoft, which was a restriction that Google had agreed to prior to the ruling. Many inside Microsoft were surprised by the ruling, and had expected that Lee would use the 1 year vacation with pay that he negotiated as part of his compensation when joining Google to sit out his non-compete obligation.