A leak of an internal memo authored by Yusuf Mehdi, reveals the future of Windows. There, he praised Panos Panay's contributions to the development of Windows and Surface. Panos, who was responsible for Surface and Windows for many years recently announced his resignation. Microsoft will continue to invest in these products, but intends to place more emphasis on AI.
Today, September 21, 2023, Microsoft will hold an event in New York, which will apparently focus on new Surface devices and AI-powered features in Windows. The presentation will be held for the first time without the participation of Panos Panay.
“We have innovated on and shipped this incredible technology inside of Edge and Bing. Microsoft 365, and most notably, Windows Copilot — all on new Windows 11 PCs from Surface to our valued OEM partners,” said Mehdi. “This Thursday at our event in NYC, we’ll share the next step we’ll take to further build on this work and lead in this exciting new era. I will keep the news of this event confidential until we tell the world later this week, but it will lay out the vision for what’s ahead.”
Mehdi is Microsoft's corporate vice president and director of consumer marketing. He has been working at Microsoft for over 30 years and was involved in the marketing campaign for Windows 3.1. He now often appears at Microsoft presentations.
Now Mehdi will take over one of the roles fulfilled by Panos Panay, and will be more of a public face for Windows and Surface. In his note, Mehdi also mentions the role of Mikhail Parakhin in the new organizational structure of Microsoft.
Mikhail Parakhin worked at Microsoft since 2007, first as Principal Development Engineer, and then as Lead Development engineer. He then worked at Microsoft for almost 7 years, after that he moved to Yandex serving the position of technical director of the company.
In 2019, Pakharin left Yandex and returned to Microsoft, but this time in the position of corporate vice president of technology. He was involved with Windows, Edge, MSN News, Skype and many other projects. Lately, Pakharin became Microsoft's president of Web technologies, thanks to his background at Yandex.
Apparently, Mehdi will be the public face of Windows, but he will not lead the team developing Windows, while Parakhin will be responsible for internals.
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