Finally it is announced — http://research.yahoo.com/berkeley/.
This is a very interesting news. Marc Davis is an interesting researcher and a creative thinker. I have always enjoyed my discussions with him.
Formation of this Lab shows how intense is the competition between the search companies and how Google is putting pressure on its competitiors.
In any case, this research lab is important both from the perspective from search research and from the role that academic research can play in mainline search. So far multimedia research in academia has not influenced search engines. It will be interesting what this new research lab does.