Struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo has set up its first lab in India at Bangalore as part of its existing R&D operations.

Yahoo Labs – Bangalore is supposed to be a center of excellence for next generation search and advertising technologies.

Rajeev Rastogi has been appointed as VP and head of the new lab.

Before joining Yahoo!, Rastogi was founding director of Bell Labs India and a Bell Labs Fellow and Distinguished Member of its Technical Staff.

Rastogi is said to have published over 125 papers on database systems and information storage and management and holds over 40 patents.

Rastogi will put together a team of scientists and engineers to focus on new approaches to information extraction and machine learning, multimedia and query processing.

Wonder what will happen to Yahoo Labs Bangalore if Microsoft succeeds in acquiring Yahoo?