Ask.com’s New Research & Development Center in Germany
Ask.com is forming a new R&D center in Hamburg, Germany and the company has also announced the appointment of Eric Heymann as director of global content acquisition for Ask.com; ‘The former head of technology at Seekport, Heymann will lead the development team in Hamburg.’
The Hamburg team will focus on global search technology research and development, working directly with the Ask.com R&D centers in Pisa, Italy, Hangzhou, China, Campbell, Calif., and Piscataway, N.J. Following the opening of the research center in Pisa earlier this year, this move continues to solidify Ask.com’s presence in Europe, with recent site launches of Ask Espana, Ask Deutschland, Ask France, Ask Italia and Ask Nederland.
As director of global content acquisition for Ask.com, Heymann will play an important role in the development of core technologies that power the Ask.com search engine. Specifically, Heymann and his team will focus on crawling technologies to index global Web content, including Web pages, images, news and blog content, among others.
“The expansion of our European research and development team will allow Ask.com to continue to develop and scale our world-class search,” said Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive vice president of search technology at Ask.com. “In addition, we are proud of the appointment of Eric Heymann as the head of the Hamburg team, as he is widely recognized for his expertise in information retrieval, crawling technologies, Web algorithms and scalable systems. His many years of experience and expertise in search will prove extremely beneficial for our users worldwide.”
