# Yahoo Labs

Yahoo! Labs served as Yahoo!'s research arm, aiming to develop research in technologies to be used within the company. Yahoo! Labs included approximately 200 research scientists and engineers.
Yahoo! Labs was headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA; it had three additional locations worldwide: New York, London, and Haifa. Yahoo! Labs Barcelona was closed in early 2015.
Yahoo! announced that Yahoo! Labs was being replaced with Yahoo! Research on February 17, 2016.

## History

In July 2005, Usama Fayyad (Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer), Prabhakar Raghavan, Andrew Tomkins, Kevin Lang and other employees who were working for the former "Yahoo! Research Labs" organization formed the new research team. Raghavan was named as Head of Yahoo! Research. Ronald J. Brachman, having finished a term as office director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), joined as the head of worldwide research operations in early September. The team was soon joined by Andrei Broder and Ricardo Baeza-Yates.
Yahoo! Labs was formed in 2008 through a proposal by Ronald Brachman and Larry Heck from 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" also includes two groups unrelated to research:

### Academic Partnerships

Academic Partnerships at Yahoo! Labs built relationships with select academic research institutions and fosters collaborative research by sharing datasets for research, hosting academic visits & talks and funding project grants and merit-based awards. Additionally, they aid Yahoo! with graduate student sourcing and helps inform the company 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. The Operations team leaded 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.

## Research areas

Yahoo! Labs conducted research in various fields, each playing a pivotal role in advancing digital frontiers. Research in advertising science aimed to understand persuasion and audience engagement. Content understanding involves decoding the language of information, while data science extracts valuable insights from the digital realm. Efforts were made to enhance the interpretation of visual content through image and video analysis.. Information Retrieval is a key domain, guiding the navigation through vast seas of data, making it accessible and manageable. Machine learning stands as a cornerstone, empowering computers to dynamically learn and evolve. Metrics and User Engagement serve as essential barometers, measuring success in the dynamic online landscape. Natural Language & Dialogue Understanding strengthens human-machine communication, fostering seamless interaction.
Optimization and feedback control fine-tune systems within Yahoo! Labs for peak performance, ensuring efficiency in technological processes. Scalable Systems form a robust foundation, facilitating digital expansion and accommodating growth seamlessly. User Modeling and Personalization techniques were employed to tailor experiences within Yahoo Labs' research spectrum.

## Notable accomplishments

* Best Paper award winners at KDD, UIST, SocInfo, and CIKM in 2013; SPAA, Hypertext, UbiComp, MobileHCI, and RecSys in 2014; ECIR, ICWSM, and ICML in 2015
* 96 patents issued to Yahoo! Labs inventors in 2013 and 2014, and 50+ in 2015
* Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), IEEE, AAAI, and Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) fellows and distinguished members; past president of AAAI
* General and PC chairs at leading conferences
* Past and current editors, associate editors, and editors-in-chief of leading scientific journals
* Authors and editors of academic and popular press books
* Member of the board of directors and treasurer of the Computing Research Association (CRA)