by News Editor
L. Sutherland
L. Sutherland
Former Google employee Yoelle Maarek has joined the Yahoo! group. In her new position as Senior Director of Yahoo! Research, Maarek will be co-leading the Yahoo! lab in Haifa along with Ronny Lempel.As the person responsible for a team that launched Google Suggest, Searching Ads and Interactive Annotations to YouTube, Maarek will be a welcome addition to the Yahoo! fold - and presumably missed by former employer Google.
Maarek founded the Google Haifa Engineering Center in 2006 and remained as engineering director of the project until recently. Previous to her time with Google, Maarek worked with IBM in a variety of roles in various locations, including in New York and Israel.
Staff movement between field leaders is inevitable, but the switch from market-dominating Google to rejuvenated but still struggling Yahoo! is sure to grab attention.
However, the recent efforts of Yahoo!'s new CEO Carol Bartz have not gone unnoticed and the company-wide shake up, combined with its reputation for innovation, could be exactly the sort of temptation for those searching for new challenges.
There are sure to be a number of industry players with their eyes on the creative tech teams of Maarek and Lempel, waiting to see if the next big search innovation will come from their corner. As Yahoo! states on its blog, the company's mission is to "help further Yahoo!'s commitment to discovering new technologies that deliver compelling experiences on the Web", meaning that Mareek will be a more than welcome addition, given her creativity track record.
