Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has hired three new executives focused on Web search and Internet from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), according to a report in TechFlash and confirmed by Microsoft.

Kevin Timmons has joined the data center group of Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. Timmons led the build-out of Yahoo’s data centers and infrastructure. Before that he was a director of Operations at GeoCities, and prior to that he served as a senior software engineer at Marconi Dynamics.

Timmons joins Yongdong Wang, who was Yahoo’s president of international search, in leaving for Microsoft.

The third person is former Google engineering director Knut Risvik, who also once worked at Yahoo. Risvik is joining Microsoft as a partner architect in its Web search platform.

Microsoft recently launched its new search platform, Bing.