According to Prabhakar Raghavan, head, Yahoo! Research,it has already started hiring scientists for its new research lab in India's IT capital. Yahoo! has four such centres in the US, and one each in Spain and Chile. The Bangalore lab will be involved in developing the next generation of businesses.

Yahoo! Research is hiring not just computer scientists, but even professionals from other fields, including economics and sociology. "We are trying to understand various behaviourial patterns of our half a billion users on how we can make their lives simple as they go about their day to day lives," said Raghavan.

In the New Year, Yahoo! Research will launch its 'Big Thinker' series of lectures in India. Experts will deliver lectures on science, technology and the internet. The speakers would share their expertise and global perspective on the constantly changing world of technology.

The experts include Raghu Ramakrishnan (Community systems: the world online), Andrew Tomkins (Next generation search technology), R. Preston McAfee (Pricing), and Ricardo Baeza-Yates (Web mining or the wisdom of the crowds).

George Zacharias, managing director, Yahoo India, said the firm was developing innovations focussed around the mobile phone, and in different Indian languages.