Yahoo’s decision to purge 1000 staff members primarily from its United States operations (some in Europe) has been hot news this year. What we didn’t know when the announcement was made was that Yahoo was planning to expand its base in India.
Yahoo is establishing a new lab in Bangalore with a focus on long-term research. The lab will be “a center of excellence for next generation search and advertising technologies, focused on making the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers.”
According to the Washington Post, the new lab will be headed by Rajeev Rastogi (previously the head of Bell Labs India) and will hire “sociologists, micro-economists, and computational scientists among other categories of staff for the lab.” The exact number of employees the new lab will hire was not disclosed, however the figure is believed to be in excess of 500 people.
The move towards lower cost Indian operations is far from new, and Yahoo already has 1500 employees in India. The decision may raise eyebrows in the United States where offshoring jobs is still fairly unpopular in the broader community, despite its popularity in the corporate and startup sectors.