Yahoo! Labs

Yahoo! Labs includes approximately 200 research scientists and engineers. Yahoo! Labs applies its scientific findings in powering products for Yahoo!'s users and enhancing value for its partners and advertisers.

Yahoo! Labs
FormationMarch 4, 2008 (2008-03-04)[1]
TypeContract research organization
Location
Websitewww.labs.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Labs[2] served as Yahoo!'s research arm.

The mission statement of Yahoo! Labs is "To power Yahoo!'s most critical products with innovative science."

Yahoo! Labs:

  • Covers the spectrum from use-inspired foundational research to applied science
  • Anticipates and invent technology-based opportunities
  • Creates technology that is used by hundreds of millions of customers every day
  • Provides scientific insights on Yahoo!'s key growth areas: mobile, video, native advertising, and social
  • Explores fundamental computational, social, and economic phenomena
  • Works extremely closely with Yahoo! software development organizations
  • Includes leaders in the international scientific research community
  • Works closely with the world’s leading universities

Yahoo! Labs is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA; it has three additional locations worldwide: New York, New York; London, England; and Haifa, Israel. Yahoo Labs Barcelona was closed in early 2015.

On February 17, 2016, Yahoo! announced that Yahoo! Labs is shutting down and replaced with Yahoo! Research.[3]

History

In July 2005, recruited by Usama Fayyad (formerly of Microsoft Research), who was Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer, Prabhakar Raghavan and Andrew Tomkins (both formerly of IBM Research) joined a few Yahoo! employees (Kevin Lang among them) who were with Yahoo! working for the erstwhile "Yahoo! Research Labs" organization, and formed the new research team. Prabhakar was named as Head of Yahoo! Research. Ronald J. Brachman, just finishing a term as office director at DARPA and a long career at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs, joined as the head of worldwide research operations in early September. The pioneering team was soon joined by a key set of additional leaders, including Andrei Broder and Ricardo Baeza-Yates.

Yahoo! Labs was formed in 2008 through a proposal by Ronald Brachman from Yahoo! Research Labs and Larry Heck from the applied research organization known as the Yahoo! Search and Advertising Sciences Lab. The proposal combined the two labs into a single organization. In 2012, Ron Brachman took over as Head of Yahoo! Labs and also became Yahoo's chief scientist.

Groups unrelated to research

Yahoo! Labs includes two groups unrelated to research:

Academic Partnerships

Academic Partnerships at Yahoo! Labs maximizes the impact of Yahoo!'s engagements with the global scientific community by building deep relationships with select academic research institutions and fostering collaborative research through dynamic programs: sharing large-scale datasets for research, managing Yahoo!'s donation of computing resources, supporting diversity and campus events, hosting academic visits and talks, and funding project grants and merit-based awards. The Academic Partnerships team positions Yahoo as one of the first companies that leading academics think of for new research collaborations, employment opportunities, and inspiring and entertaining online products. Additionally, the team aids Yahoo with graduate student sourcing and helps keep the company up-to-date on strategic opportunities and insights from the external research community.

Operations

Operations at Yahoo! Labs is responsible for managing the day-to-day processes and procedures for all of the organization's research scientists and engineers across the world. The Operations team leads Yahoo! corporate initiatives on behalf of the Labs and tracks progress for Labs goals. Furthermore, the Operations team is responsible for managing Yahoo! Labs' finances, recruiting efforts, events, and communications. Perhaps most importantly, the team nurtures, grows, and supports Yahoo! Labs' culture in order to retain and attract the top researchers in industry and academia.

Notable accomplishments

References
  1. "Yahoo! Inc. - Company Timeline". Wayback Machine. 2008-07-13. Archived from the original on 2008-07-13. Retrieved 2016-07-20.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. "Yahoo Labs"
  3. "Yahoo!'s New Research Model"
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