BEIJING (June 11 2009): US Internet giant Yahoo! has opened a global research and development centre in Beijing to tap into China's pool of intellectual talent as it seeks to reduce costs, state media said Wednesday. The centre, the third for Yahoo! with the two others located at its US headquarters and in India, will focus on search, advertising and other personal Internet tools and technologies, the China Daily reported.
It will also work on developing the company's core platform globally, the report said, citing Jeff Kinder, senior vice president of Yahoo! Media Products and Solutions. "The primary reason (for us to set up the centre here) is the deep pool of engineers and scientists the country has. We will also optimise our cost structure," said Kinder, according to the report.
The company did not disclose the value of the investment or the number of staff the centre planned to employ, the paper said. The facility will be operated independently from the Alibaba Group, China's biggest e-commerce portal that controls Yahoo!'s operations in the country, it added.
Yahoo! owns 39 percent of Alibaba, which also runs China's top online auction site Taobao.com and business-to-business e-commerce platform Alibaba.com, the report said. The launch of the Beijing centre came after Yahoo! reported a
nearly 80 percent slump in its net profit in the first three months of the year due to the economic downturn and said it would trim its workforce by five percent. However Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz has said the company planned to bolster its ranks of engineers while shaving away unneeded layers of management.
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