Visiting India in May 2006, Yahoo!’s co-founder Jerry Yang predicted that India will be among the top 3 internet markets in five years. Last month, Prabhakar Raghavan, head, Yahoo! Research, visited India and spoke with BW’s Nelson Vinod Moses. Excerpts:

Were you late in coming to India?

No. We were here with Yahoo! R&D. Yahoo! Research will focus on the fundamental scientific and technical areas (search, machine learning, microeconomics, media experience and design and community systems).

How can Yahoo! Research help in better monetisation of content ?

In many ways. We can price key words for search advertising. We can have differential pricing for laptop advertising where a key word for laptops, which are $1,000 or less, become a separate category. We are also trying to increase monetisation of user-generated content.

Will Panama (search ad platform) be your sole ad platform?

We got going in 2005, and we had to migrate without stopping — like trying to switch the wheels of a car when it is moving. Panama will not be our only ad monetisation tool. There will be others for user generated content and other categories. But over time all advertising will come under one platform.

Are you encountering problems with talent retention?

I don’t think so. We have had a number of successes. We won 80 per cent of all hires at the executive level, in direct competition to Google and MSN. Money is not the issue, it is about the work style.

What R&D is your group targeting?

The team is doing good work on product platforms, but we would like to see more initiatives on ideas are spawned here and ownership that originates here.