Yahoo! beefs up its Research Labs to match Google and MSN

By Steve Malone

Posted on 14 Apr 2005 at 17:32

It is a truth universally accepted that if you are in the search engine business, you need a big research budget. Thus, Yahoo! is expanding the scope of its Yahoo! Research Labs into new areas to reinforce its business strategy: which is to keep up with the Google and Microsoft Research Labs.

Yahoo!'s stated aim is to attract the world's most talented scientists and develop Yahoo! Research Labs into a world-class centre for scientific innovation. Among the projects that the Labs will focus on are scalable solutions to assist search and information navigation, social media, community, personalisation, and mobility.

The announcement of the revamped Labs was somewhat tarnished by the news that Gary Flake, one of Yahoo!'s top engineers and head of research has jumped ship and moved to MSN Search. His is the latest defection during a period which has seen senior engineers and research staff take up positions with one of the big three search engines as they vie for technical advantage. At the beginning of this year Ben Goodger the lead programmer for Firefox joined Google followed in March by Mark Lukovsky a senior Microsoft engineer.

The price of building these teams is probably enough to make Roman Abramovich wince, but it is a measure of how strategic search has now become.

Nevertheless, Yahoo! is putting a brave face on the latest defection and has appointed its Chief Data Officer Dr. Usama Fayyad to oversee the direction of the Research Labs.

'I look forward to expanding Yahoo!'s technical research agenda, growing the team to bring new focus and energy to Yahoo! Research Labs, and building on the truly innovative research that our talented group of scientists and engineers have been working on,' said Fayyad. 'We want to lay the foundation for establishing the new science that will define the future of the web and its essential role in everyday life.'