Buried in the release that Yahoo’s Qi Lu is joining Microsoft as president of its Online Services Group was the news that Brian McAndrews is resigning his post as SVP, Microsoft’s Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group. McAndrews, the former CEO of aQuantive, relinquished his title when Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) bought his company for $6 billion in August 2007.

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—A losing battle: McAndrews was often mentioned for the role that Qi Lu is taking on, which became open when Kevin Johnson exited the post at Microsoft and joined Juniper in July. He had been given high marks for fittting aQuantive fairly nicely into Microsoft’s different culture and structure. Clearly, the choice of Qi Lu over McAndrews means he lost the battle to replace Johnson. Despite his good work, in many ways, McAndrews was considered a longshot. The Microsoft purchase made him very rich, and therefore unlikely to want to work for someone else—especially someone like the hard-to-please Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. McAndrews isn’t going anywhere at the moment and will take the next few months to “transition out” of his job. So while he ponders his next move, he would be an interesting—and ironic—candidate for Yahoo’s open CEO role. Release