You’re invited: Yahoo! Research Berkeley

Posted March 4th, 2007 at 9:57 pm by Bradley Horowitz, VP, Advanced Development

Number of Comments 3 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Cool Stuff, Working at Yahoo!

One of the things that inspires and excites me most about Yahoo! is the truly innovative research we are doing in the areas that matter to people using the Internet today, and what will matter to them tomorrow.

The seeds of Yahoo! Research were planted when Yahoo! acquired Overture (which included their research lab) in the fall of 2003. We eventually grew this into a world-class research organization that today focuses on creating and exploring groundbreaking technology that will improve the online experience of our users. Our research focuses on topics from machine learning to microeconomics to search & information retrieval.

All along, our goal has been to hire the best and brightest researchers, technologists and big thinkers to help us discover the scientific underpinnings of the Internet. We’ve brought together some of the most talented scientists in a grand total of six global locations, working together to answer the question, “What is the future of the Internet?”

Our approach to research is unique because of the sheer scope of information available to us. While a researcher at an academic institution can hope to study a group with tens of participants, Yahoo! Research can observe the behavior of hundreds of millions of users — tapping into some of the largest and richest data repositories in the world (while, of course, maintaining user privacy).

But that doesn’t mean we are turning our back on academia — to the contrary! We have partnered with some of the leading universities in these fields, including the University of California, Berkeley; Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain; and University of Chile in Santiago, with local arms of Yahoo! Research in each city. We’re tapping into some of the brightest professors and students in technology research, benefiting from their vertical expertise and fresh new ideas. And witnessing the giddiness of our academic partners in Yahoo!’s data playground is indescribable.

Today, I’d like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at our original joint academic facility — the one that’s in our backyard and falls into my world. Yahoo! Research Berkeley is focused on the ideas and developments that can make a short-term impact on our products, digging into the latest in social, context-aware and media research. This video will give you a sense of their research mandate and some of the prototypes they’ve created, from ZoneTag to TagMaps to Remix, a project that led to our acquisition of Jumpcut. You’ll also get a taste of that unmistakable Berkeley culture.

Enjoy the tour!

Bradley Horowitz
VP Advanced Development

Photo from flickmor