The multinational US company Yahoo has opened its first European research centre
in Barcelona, for research and development on new technologies to improve its
Internet service and attract new talent.
The research centre, which already has twelve European researchers and will
employ more, is at the Barcelona Media centre of innovation at the Estació de
França, and aims to move to the technology district, 22@ in 2008.
With this centre, the second major search engine in the world aims to perfect
online research with the latest technologies, to improve its Internet service,
the recovery of information, and the storing of data.
The director of Yahoo Research Barcelona is Ricardo Baeza-Yates, a university
professor of Barcelona's Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He explained that the Catalan
capital had been chosen as the city which has been the leader in quality
technology in Europe over the last six years. He added that the lab would act as
a magnet, attracting more top European research workers in the field of research
and development.
The company aims to 'attract European talents', and to decentralize its research
and development activities until now concentrated mainly in California.
The research laboratory provides Yahoo! with the capability to tap into
innovative ideas and research from students and faculty at many of the local
universities in Barcelona and other major cities in Europe.
"The science of the Internet is still very much in its infancy and there
are very few experts in the world that have the capabilities and know-how to
move the needle forward in this area," said Dr. Usama Fayyad, Yahoo's chief
data officer and senior vice president overseeing Yahoo! Research. "We
believe that the expansion of Yahoo! Research across Europe and Latin America
provides us with the opportunity to tap into some of the most renowned
scientists in the world to help Yahoo enhance its content and search offerings
that reach our growing global base of more than 400 million users, the world's
largest Internet audience."
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