Today, Internet science takes a big step into the clouds. In a partnership with tech giants HP and Intel, we’re creating a global, multi-datacenter research testbed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education. (What’s cloud computing? Think of it as the technology that makes it possible for computing resources to be provided as a service where you only pay for what you use.)

Academic research is facing new challenges in today’s Internet age. Universities often don’t have the equipment –- hardware and software -– to maintain in-depth research at Internet scale. Academic researchers are limited in the research they can conduct, and this, ultimately constrains the amount of large-scale Web innovations coming to the marketplace.

Here at Yahoo!, we believe in open and collaborative research as the best way towards building the next generation of the Web. As part of our dynamic Academic Relations program, we’re teaming up with academia, as well as other companies and governments across the globe, to invest in and pool together the large-scale computers that will let researchers conduct truly breakthrough work on cloud computing and data storage systems.

The HP/Intel/Yahoo! Cloud Research Testbed is a significant step in that it will not only allow researchers to run applications and data on large-scale supercomputers, they will be able to experiment and conduct research on a massive scale. It’s like letting them simulate a true Web environment and that’s exactly what you need to ensure which ideas will work in the wild.

Joining us in this first-ever large-scale international consortium are Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, with contributions from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well.

This is all part of Yahoo!’s overall focus and investment in cloud computing and data infrastructure. We recently announced the formation of the Cloud Computing and Data Infrastructure Group (CCDI), a new group dedicated to building out our next-generation cloud infrastructure.

In addition, in November 2007, Yahoo! deployed a supercomputing-class data center, called the M45, for cloud computing research; Carnegie Mellon University was the first institution to take advantage of this supercomputer. In March 2008, Yahoo! announced an agreement with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) to jointly support cloud computing research in India. The CRL supercomputer is one of the world’s top five supercomputers and is the first supercomputer available to academic institutions in India.

I speak for our many research scientists when I say we’re excited about this open testbed and being able to collaborate with leaders who share our same vision. The HP/Intel/Yahoo! Cloud Research Testbed is a truly global research effort, and more partners and researchers will be invited to join and participate in the program when all of the systems are up and running later this year. The sky is the limit from here on out.

Prabhakar Raghavan
Head of Yahoo! Research

Photo from Nicholas_T

When the Web first appeared, people browsed for the sheer serendipitous kick of it, but soon the Web became a place to get things done. Web search has witnessed a similar transformation: search engines have graduated from fielding ego queries to becoming the starting point for being productive. While search engines have evolved with these changing needs, we think search technology is far from mature.

What if your favorite news site had a search engine you could turn to when news breaks that not only surfaces the best articles on that topic, but also the most relevant content from across the Web? Or what if your search engine understood your social relationships or your site preferences and presented results with that in mind? When you’re searching for new music, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a search engine that knew your and your friends’ taste in music, drew in reviews from across the Web, and recommended songs you might enjoy?

Today we’re announcing a service that brings ideas like these a bit closer to reality.

Yahoo! Search BOSS, which stands for Build Your Own Search Service, is a new open Web services platform from Yahoo! Search that will allow developers and companies of all sizes to leverage one of the most valuable assets on the Web, the Yahoo! Search infrastructure. It lets them realize their own vision of what a search experience should be, enabling unlimited mash-ups and disrupting the search landscape.

BOSS will enable developers and companies to easily enter the search industry –- without large capital or resource expenditures — unleashing a wave of search innovation beyond any one of today’s search principals. Now anyone –- your favorite shopping site, an entrepreneur with a great idea or a start-up developer –- can tap into Yahoo!’s technology to create their own Web search experience without the infrastructure or talent resources needed to create one from scratch.

The result is that you’ll have more choice and flexibility in finding whatever you’re looking for on the Web –- just as you now have far more programming options with cable TV than when there were just three networks. (For examples of how BOSS technology can be used or to get started building your own search engine, visit the Yahoo! Developer Network.)

Stay tuned for more to come on how we are fundamentally changing the way you search.

Prabhakar Raghavan
Chief Strategist for Yahoo! Search