Welcome to Bellevue, YHOO…

Posted on | October 20, 2007 |

I’ve been wondering what my old manager has been up to lately - he’s been very hush hush about his plans… Now we all know…B-).

bizjournals.com

Yahoo could take Bellevue space for 600 workers

Friday October 19, 4:48 pm ET

Yahoo! Inc. confirmed plans to set up a research and development office in Bellevue that could eventually house up to 600 employees.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO - News) is the latest major technology company to establish an outpost in the Puget Sound area, the back yard of Redmond-based Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT - News). Search giant Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG - News), of Mountain View, Calif., has been building R&D operations in Kirkland and has a sales office in Seattle’s Fremont area.

Yahoo has leased four floors totaling 115,000 square feet of space in the One Twelfth@Twelfth building in downtown Bellevue, said Dave Sobeski, Yahoo senior vice president of strategy and technology. The space was formerly occupied by Nortel Networks and is being "Yahoo-ized" in accordance with the company’s specifications, he said.

Sobeski, a former Windows general manager at Microsoft who left the software giant last October, was coy about Yahoo’s hiring goals in Bellevue. But he said the company, which currently employs 30 to 40 people in Puget Sound, wanted over the next two years to "maximize" the new space, which he said could ultimately accommodate 500 to 600 people.

Sobeski said Yahoo was attracted to Puget Sound because of the region’s technical talent, not only at Microsoft but at other large technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE), as well as the local startup community and the University of Washington.

"We wanted to come up here because we believe the talent base is superior," Sobeski said. "We’re going to be able to find gems in all these different places."

He said Yahoo picked Bellevue and the One Twelfth@Twelfth building because of their proximity to State Route 520 and interstates 90 and 405.