Fischer, who reports to Ashley Highfield, managing director and vice-president of consumer and online UK, joined the company's consumer and online division in March last year, two months after it launched.
His departure comes as Microsoft rolls out a multimillion-pound ad campaign for its Bing search engine. The three-month integrated push, created by JWT, introduces the strapline, ‘Bing and decide'.
The drive forms part of a wider strategy to challenge Google's dominance in the UK; this also includes the official
launch of Microsoft's video-on-demand (VOD) player later this month.
MSN launched its long-form VOD platform into beta testing last August with 300 hours of full-length content, and has since been making tweaks to it.
The platform has already proved popular with major brands such as Audi, Müller and T-Mobile, which have
advertised around programmes including the BBC's Hustle and Channel 4's Peep Show and Shameless.
Competition in the VOD sector is intensifying following the launch of SeeSaw last month and full-length content on YouTube late last year.
Prior to joining the consu-mer and online division, Fischer was general manager of Microsoft's Xbox marketing, leading the global and US marketing teams for the console and games for Windows. Before that he was vice-president for marketing at video-game company Sega in the US, and director of marketing for games developer Namco.
In his most recent role, Fischer was responsible for brands including Windows, Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Mobile.
He oversaw the UK-facing ‘I'm a PC' campaign, created by ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky, for Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.
Last February, Microsoft poached RBS Insurance senior brand and advertising manager Patrick Singh as
online services marketing manager. He was brought in to lead consumer marketing communications across MSN, Microsoft Live Search and Windows Live.
Microsoft declined to comment on Fischer's departure.
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