Briefs

Gary Price -- June 24, 2004 --

Dr. Gary Flake is Principal Scientist & Head of Yahoo! Research Labs. In this wide-ranging interview, he talks about the daily work of researchers at Yahoo Labs, and what they're doing to make search better.

Dr. Flake, can you tell us about your background in IR and web search?

Gary Flake: Like a lot of people in this industry, my background is in machine learning. In the late 80s, I was working on what can now be best termed as "toy" problems relative to today's scales. In the early 90s, I started working on larger data mining problems (at first from the biomedical domain, and then later on in industrial processes). Things seemed to get much more interesting with more data, so it was natural for me to switch to the Web and IR because that was where some of the most interesting data could be found.

How many people do you have on your team at Yahoo Research? How do you decide on what new products or services to work on? What's a typical day like?

We have a couple dozen full-time members of Yahoo! Research Labs (YRL), and a significantly larger number when you consider the extended R&D family within Yahoo! that includes folks from the individual business units (BUs). While those two sets of researchers collaborate as often as possible, the focus of the full-time members of YRL is on areas that can impact the whole of the company, while the BU scientists focus more on problems specific to a BU.

Here is the rest of the story from Search Engine Watch.