Yahoo Labs
| Company type | Research division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Technology research |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Usama Fayyad, Prabhakar Raghavan, Andrew Tomkins, Kevin Lang, Ronald J. Brachman |
| Defunct | 2016-02-17 |
| Fate | Succeeded by Yahoo! Research |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California , United States |
Area served | Global (offices in New York City, London, Haifa) |
Key people | Ronald J. Brachman (Head of Yahoo! Labs and chief scientist as of 2012) |
Number of employees | 200 |
Yahoo! Labs functioned as the research branch of Yahoo!, dedicated to creating technologies primarily for internal application. The team consisted of approximately 200 scientists and engineers specializing in research.
Based in Sunnyvale, CA, Yahoo! Labs maintained additional offices located in New York City, London, and Haifa. The facility in Barcelona was closed during early 2015.
On February 17, 2016, Yahoo! declared that Yahoo! Labs would be succeeded by Yahoo! Research.
History
In July 2005, a new research group was established by Usama Fayyad (then Chief Data Officer at Yahoo!), Prabhakar Raghavan, Andrew Tomkins, Kevin Lang, along with others from the original "Yahoo! Research Labs." Prabhakar Raghavan took on the role of Head of Yahoo! Research. In September, Ronald J. Brachman, who had previously directed a DARPA office, joined to lead global research operations. Subsequent additions to the team included Andrei Broder and Ricardo Baeza-Yates.
The formal creation of Yahoo! Labs occurred in 2008 when Ronald Brachman and Larry Heck combined the "Yahoo! Search and Advertising Sciences Lab" with other research groups. In 2012, Brachman advanced to become Head of Yahoo! Labs as well as Yahoo!’s chief scientist.
Within Yahoo! Labs, two divisions operated outside direct research activities:
Academic Partnerships
This group fostered relationships with selected universities by facilitating access to datasets, organizing visits and lectures, funding academic projects, and recruiting graduate students. Their efforts supported Yahoo!'s strategic objectives by leveraging insights from academic research and aligning scholarly innovation with corporate aims.
Operations
The Operations team at Yahoo! Labs handled everyday administrative functions, spearheaded corporate initiatives, and monitored progress toward organizational objectives. Responsibilities also included managing budgets, hiring processes, event planning, and communications.
Research areas
Yahoo! Labs concentrated on several core research fields that propelled advancements in digital technology. Advertising science focused on audience targeting and influence strategies. Content understanding involved interpreting informational language, while data science worked on deriving actionable knowledge from digital datasets. Image and video analysis enhanced capabilities related to visual content processing.
Information Retrieval aimed to improve access to data resources. Machine learning supported adaptive computational models. Metrics and User Engagement assessed the effectiveness of online platforms. Natural Language & Dialogue Understanding promoted more natural interactions between humans and machines.
Optimization and feedback control were utilized to maximize system performance. Scalable Systems addressed infrastructure growth and digital scalability. User Modeling and Personalization were dedicated to customizing user experiences within various Yahoo! Labs initiatives.
Notable accomplishments
- Awarded Best Paper honors at conferences such as KDD, UIST, SocInfo, CIKM (2013); SPAA, Hypertext, UbiComp, MobileHCI, RecSys (2014); ECIR, ICWSM, ICML (2015)
- Secured 96 patents during 2013–2014; issued more than 50 patents in 2015
- Included fellows and distinguished members of ACM, IEEE, AAAI, and ACL; featured a former AAAI president
- Held leadership positions including general chair and program committee chair roles at prominent conferences
- Served as editors for leading scientific journals
- Authored and edited both academic publications and popular science books
- Participated as board member and treasurer for the Computing Research Association (CRA)