Yahoo Opens New York Facility

Yahoo Inc. said Thursday its opening a new research center in New York, its first outside the West Coast, and has an eye on adding more centers in the coming months.

Yahoos New York lab will focus on initiatives such as “computers doing things on their own,” which an Internet search engine could use to mine more data, said Ron Brachman, Yahoos newly appointed vice president of worldwide research operations.

Yahoo runs two other research facilities, near its home base in Californias Silicon Valley. “This is the beginning of our global expansion,” Brachman said.

In October, Yahoo opened a research facility a few miles north of Berkeley, Calif., to collaborate with professors, graduate students and undergrads from the University of California, Berkeley.

/zimages/5/28571.gifRead morehereabout Yahoos mobile center in Berkeley.

Meanwhile, Yahoos major search competitors are also delving deeper into research facilities.

In the span of two months, top Internet companies have all opened research facilities in conjunction with the university. The latest is RAD Lab, which is funded by Microsoft Corp., Internet search leader Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. RAD stands for Reliable Adaptive Distributed Systems.

A lab spokeswoman said everything it develops will be open source, meaning itll be “free and open to the public.”

Microsoft, Google and Sun vow to contribute $500,000 a year each for five years, totaling about $7.5 million. A university spokeswoman likened the arrangement to a grant from Google, Microsoft and Sun.

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