I joined Yahoo! because it’s one of the world’s great technology companies – in any industry. Yahoo! has always been at the forefront of making the Internet more useful and indispensable to everyday life – from 13 years ago, when David and Jerry first started the company, to today.

Extending our leadership requires that we constantly tap into user and advertiser insights to understand their needs – which seem to change daily.

This pace of change demands constant innovation and focused execution. To make it all happen, you’ve got to have the best team — world-class engineers and scientists researching and delivering the technologies that define the next phase of the Internet consumer experience. That was a key draw to the job here at Yahoo! — working with a brilliant group of experts from a range of fields beyond traditional computer science that include data-driven analysis, high-quality search, algorithms, and economic models. For hardcore techies, this is tackling big problems with the latest toys. For you, this means the best and brightest working to improve your online experience.

And now we have even more. In the past week we’ve expanded our Research team and centers, with new locations in Israel and India. Today in Haifa, Israel, we opened a new Yahoo! Research Lab to focus on search technologies. We’ve tapped Dr. Ronny Lempel, who comes to us from IBM’s Haifa Research Lab, to lead the new center. He will be a great addition to the top-notch team we’ve pulled together to be at the leading edge and deliver even more compelling online search experiences. His expertise in search technologies, and ties to local academia, will help us draw on the best talent and knowledge from the region and strengthen our worldwide Research efforts.

Last week in India we launched Yahoo! Labs – Bangalore to create a center of excellence for next-generation search and advertising technologies. I’m proud to say we brought in eminent scientist Dr. Rajeev Rastogi, founding director of Bell Labs India, to lead this new lab. They will tackle some of the core computer science problems — specifically around data mining — and create solutions that in the long term will deliver a more relevant experience for users and advertisers. This is an important area to focus on now, as Internet content and data only continue to expand as more people and machines are connected.

Sound cool? That’s my team. That’s your team.

Ari Balogh
Chief Technology Officer