Duane Forrester Returns To Bing After Being Laid Off From Microsoft Two Months Ago

Bing re-hires Duane Forrester after letting him go two months ago. Duane Forrester will be working in basically the same role as before.

About two months ago, Duane Forrester was laid off during mass Microsoft layoffs. Duane was the face of Bing, he was the Webmaster Outreach Manager for Bing and bridged webmasters to the search engine. To many, he was what Matt Cutts was to Google.

Today, Duane Forrester announced on his personal blog that he is returning to Bing. He said he will be in a role very similar to what he was doing prior, including speaking at events, blogging on the search and webmaster blogs and even working with the API team. He said the main difference, other Bing representatives will be out there as well, with him, communicating to the community.

Duane said that during his 2-months without a job, he had interest in companies hiring from GoDaddy, eBay,Amazon and possibly even the TSA. But he decided to take back a familiar job with Microsoft, after they saw the outpour of support from the community about his leave.

Duane said:

Throughout it all I had in mind a few things that mattered to me. I knew I wanted to continue working with businesses (of all sizes). That’s a passion of mine and something I think I’m good at. I also knew I didn’t want to stray too far from the online marketing community, owing so much to the industry and the people in it. Scale also mattered to me. Being able to help out hundreds, or thousands of people and businesses each year in the past had me yearning for more of that exposure. And I was definitely open to opportunities that would help me build my personal brand.

He decided to go back to Microsoft and work with the Bing team.

I do wonder if Google made an offer.