New Yahoo! R&D centre signals focus on Europe

by Fiona Ramsay, Marketing 25-Sep-08, 08:47

LONDON - Yahoo! this week opened a research and development centre in Grenoble, France.

The openinig comes as the portal attempts to focus more of its development activities in Europe, having been accused of ignoring Europe by opening R&D labs in Israel and India.

The Grenoble centre will focus on the global development of Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Search, together with semantic search. Another area of development is the patented comparison-shopping technology used by online shopping and price-comparison site Kelkoo.

'With the opening of this world-class facility, we will have the opportunity to work with some of the most talented engineers and draw on their expertise as we continue to develop our brilliant ecosystem of products and services,' said John Linwood, senior vice-president of international engineering at Yahoo!.