Microsoft Bing chief becomes technology chief at Electronic Arts

Ken Moss, the man who laid the foundation for search engine Bing at Microsoft, moves to games publisher Electronic Arts, where he takes on as chief technology officer. At EA, he mainly has to shape the digital services of the publisher.

“Ken comes at an important time,” Andrew Wilson, the executive director of Electronic Arts, said in a blog post. “As CTO, Ken will lead, set the strategy and vision of EA’s Digital Platform and Information Technology division.” The online component of gaming is becoming increasingly important, according to the director, and Moss has been brought in to improve the publisher’s online services.

Moss was employed by Microsoft, where he worked for 20 years. At Microsoft, he was one of the founders of the program that would become the search engine Bing. Moss started developing the search engine at the end of the last century. Until then, Microsoft used results from search engines like Inktomi and AltaVista. Microsoft’s own search engine was presented as Windows Live Search at the beginning of this century and was renamed Bing in 2009 after a number of name changes.

Moss’s move comes at a striking moment. Earlier this week, rumors appeared that Microsoft will intervene hard and possibly cut thousands of jobs. At EA, Moss can start right away. The publisher was in the news earlier this week because its online service Origin seems to keep a list of the programs that run on the user’s PC. It’s not the first time the program has been discredited.