Microsoft: Man behind ‘successes’ like Bing, Copilot & Surface wants to leave
Microsoft’s long-time marketing chief for consumer products plans to retire next year. Yusuf Mehdi, who has led the marketing of Windows, Office, Surface, Copilot, Edge and Bing for over 30 years, announced his departure.
Mehdi starts his ‘final season’
A fundamental change is on the horizon at Microsoft, which could also potentially mean change for us as end customers. Yusuf Mehdi, one of the software giant’s most well-known and long-serving managers, has announced his departure. However, it’s not that far yet, as Mehdi wants to work full-time at Microsoft for the next financial year. In an interview with the magazine GeekWire Mehdi called the current year his “last season”. The 59-year-old is part of Microsoft’s leadership team as Executive Vice President and is responsible for marketing Windows, Surface, Copilot, Microsoft 365, Edge and Bing as Consumer Chief Marketing Officer.
Succession open, if at all
In the final phase of his work at Microsoft, which is about to begin, Mehdi wants to work towards a smooth transition in coordination with CEO Satya Nadella and Chief Marketing Officer Takeshi Numoto. It is still unclear what the management structure will look like after his departure, Mehdi explained in an email to Microsoft employees.
Over the next year, Mehdi plans to work on “positioning Windows for the agentic era,” shaping the various AI services from the Copilot ecosystem into a “unified experience” that span work and home life, and continuing to grow the Microsoft 365 (Office) subscription services business to reach 100 million customers.
Mehdi gave us Bing & aggressive co-pilot tactics
Mehdi may still be known to some as the head of the team behind the search engine Bing, which was unsuccessful compared to Google. However, he ended up working at Microsoft as an intern in 1991 and began working full-time for the company in 1992, parallel to his studies. Among other things, he was involved in the introduction of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 before he got involved in the “browser war” after the launch of Internet Explorer. Mehdi later spent more than a decade leading Microsoft’s online services and search engine businesses. In 2011, he helped launch the Xbox One. He was also the one who ensured that all teams in the US football league NFL implemented their strategies using Surface tablets.
Mehdi was also responsible for the successful introduction of Windows 10 and the number of actively used devices exceeding one billion. Today, in addition to his work as head of marketing for consumer products, Mehdi is responsible, among other things, for the broad integration of Copilot and other services into Windows and Office and, following the departure of Panos Panay in 2023, also heads the Surface business. Yusuf Mehdi says he will work for Microsoft until June 30, 2027. It was said that he doesn’t yet know which path he wants to pursue after that.
