Yahoo! rolls out cities, maps services, R&D centre

In a strategically timed announcement on the eve of AOL’s launch in the country, online leader Yahoo! has officially launched two new offerings in the cities and maps space.

David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, also flagged off its 2.2 lakh sq. ft R&D facility in Bangalore on Wednesday. Yahoo! has identified three key regions for research – Asia, Europe and Emerging Markets – and the India facility will lead developments in Emerging Markets.

Sharad Sharma has been appointed CEO of R&D at Yahoo! India and Dr Jawahar Malhotra is the chief technical officer. The R&D centre will develop software for the company, and its engineering division will monitor and perform quality checks.

Yahoo! also officially launched beta versions of Yahoo! Our City and Yahoo! India Maps. Yahoo! Our City is a portal for user generated and editorial content on 20 cities in India including Bhubaneswar, Bhopal and Madurai, besides the bigger cities.

Yahoo! India Maps is an interactive map service developed by CE Infosystems, the company that created Map My India. The service has a searchable database of 170 cities, 4,785 towns and 2.2 lakh villages in India.

Yahoo! India is keen on developing local content, as is evident from the recent tieup with Jagran for a Hindi portal. It is reportedly also looking for a partner for its travel portal. The stage is obviously being set for an Indian chapter of the longstanding battle between AOL and Yahoo!. While AOL’s strengths lie in its technology capabilities, Yahoo! has always been ahead in localisation of content.

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