Hot off the press, the new issue of Dataquest, India’s No. 1 tech publication, lists Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo!’s Chief Strategy Officer and Head, Yahoo! Labs, as one of the 20 Most Influential Global Indians in Technology. The cover story of the issue titled The Most Influential Global Indians in Technology, features “global Indians who are in a position to influence how technology and the technology business will shape up in the next few years.”
Joining Prabhakar in this exclusive club are other IT influencers who are uniquely positioned to impact how the technology business evolves globally. As the Dataquest team reiterates, this list is not a celebration of “Indian success,” but one that zeroes in on the “20 Indian technology greats who are influencing how the technology business globally, and technology itself, is shaping up. These are the people who need to be watched for their action.”
 
Profiling Prabhakar, Dataquest  writes, “The company (Yahoo!) is betting big on veterans like Prabhakar to challenge and compete with the folks at Mountain View. Prabhakar took over as head of Yahoo! Labs, created in 2005, with the mandate to redefine search in many different ways, to create new opportunities for Yahoo!, and to take competition head on. Under the leadership of Prabhakar, Yahoo! has launched many significant initiatives.” 
In his role as Chief Strategy Officer at Yahoo!, Prabhakar Raghavan is responsible for developing the long-term corporate strategy and technical vision for Yahoo!. As Head of Yahoo! Labs, Prabhakar oversees one of the world’s premier industrial research labs and works to extend Yahoo!’s scientific leadership in several disciplines critical to innovation in consumer Web experiences and online advertising. At Yahoo! Labs he has overseen the growth of the research, applied science and academic relations functions globally, with major Yahoo! Labs centers of excellence in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. 
Raghavan is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE, and consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was senior vice president and chief technology officer at Verity, before which he held various technical and managerial positions at IBM Research. Raghavan holds a Ph.D. from Berkeley and has been awarded the Laurea honoris causa by the University of Bologna. He is the author of textbooks on algorithms and on information retrieval, along with numerous papers and patents.

Quoted from the SF Chronicle article:

Two years ago, Blake Irving had more time to spend mornings surfing on the Malibu coast. That was before Yahoo's then-Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz lured him back into the corporate world, as chief product officer of the Sunnyvale company.

Now the industry veteran stands at the center of the efforts to turn around the struggling Internet pioneer.

For months, the public chatter surrounding Yahoo has focused on executive turnover and exploration of its "strategic options." Those themes continued last week with the departure of four more board members - following Bartz and co-founder Jerry Yang out the door - and the emergence of details about how the company might unload its lucrative stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan.

But the real war in the technology space begins and ends with products. Without new ways of drawing users and advertisers, the rest won't add up to much.

That's where Irving comes in. He helped Microsoft build its vast online operations as vice president of the software giant's Windows Live Platform group, before becoming a business professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

In an interview with The Chronicle, he laid out his vision for creating "deeply personal digital experiences" that deliver on five points: personal relevance through science and data; premium user experiences; a mobile-first mind-set; social features that better resemble how we interact in the real world; and an "ecosystem" that allows other companies to work within Yahoo's tools...

To read the entire article click here.
To hear what Blake has to say about Livestand and Living Ads click here.

What a way to start 2012! After an intensive four-month search, Yahoo! has named Scott Thompson as chief executive officer. Thompson comes to Yahoo! from eBay’s PayPal unit, where he served as president of the leading online-payment site since 2008. The tech guru has also served as the chief information officer for Barclays Global Investors and Visa Inc.’s Inovant. He plans to apply his dedication to innovation, speed, and discipline to carry Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, into the new year. In Thompson’s own words: “I cannot wait to get started.”

Here are six fun facts to keep you up to speed on the new CEO.
-    The 54-year-old New Englander hails from the small town of Raynham, near the south shore of Massachusetts. He’s a die-hard fan of all things related to Boston sports. Listen closely for his distinct Boston accent, which the Wall Street Journal calls “the best New England accent in corporate America since Jack Welch.”

-    Thompson’s father was a small-business owner, which inspired Thompson’s own professional path. He remembers, “What [my father] did and how he did it is why my brothers and sisters and I are where we are today.”
-    Thompson is a proud graduate of Stonehill College, a small private Catholic school in Easton, Massachusetts, where he holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and computer science. “A lot of things form the basis of who you are,” Thompson said in an interview, “and I give Stonehill the appropriate amount of credit for helping shape me along the way.”
-    The left-handed Silicon Valley resident is married with two sons and a daughter.
-    Thompson was the recipient of the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
-    During his time at PayPal, Thompson helped to more than double the payment service’s revenue, boosting it from $1.8 billion to $4 billion.

Quick Quotes From Thompson
-    “Pretty religiously, I start [my day] on some Yahoo! site in the morning.” – On his longtime loyalty to Yahoo!.-    “I’m from Boston; [we’ve been] the underdogs since the beginning of time. Hopefully that spirit has held through. I like doing complicated, very difficult, very challenging things.” – On his ability to step up to the challenge of becoming Yahoo!’s CEO.
-    “I want to return this business to being one of the great iconic brands. I have a core belief that what happens in the next five years — and the next ten — is almost impossible to imagine.” – On his vision for the future of Yahoo!.
Quick Quotes About Thompson
-    “When he took over PayPal it was far smaller, much more like an emerging startup that eBay absorbed a couple years earlier.” – Gil B. Luria, Wedbush analyst, on Thompson’s success at PayPal (via Wall Street Journal).
-    “Scott brings to Yahoo! a proven record of building on a solid foundation of existing assets and resources to reignite innovation and drive growth — precisely the formula we need at Yahoo!.” – Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s chairman of the board, on the decision to appoint Thompson as CEO.
-    “Thompson is a seasoned executive and a smart operator with particular depth in technology.” – Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard in a report to clients (via San Jose Mercury News).