Prabhakar Raghavan
Prabhakar Raghavan is a Senior Vice President at Google. He is responsible for Google Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce and Payments products.
Prabhakar is one of the foremost authorities on Search and is the co-author of two widely-used graduate texts on algorithms and on search: Randomized Algorithms and Introduction to Information Retrieval. He has over 20 years of research spanning algorithms, web search and databases, published over 100 papers in various fields, and holds 20 issued patents, including several on link analysis for web search.
Previously, he served as Vice President of Google Apps, Google Cloud, overseeing engineering, products and user experience. Under his leadership, the Apps business expanded from a set of consumer apps to an enterprise solution that is a major contributor to Google’s Cloud business. He also grew both Gmail and Drive past 1 billion MAUs and introduced a number of machine intelligence features in G Suite, including Smart Reply, Smart Compose, Drive Quick Access — each leading to measurable improvements in user experience.
In 2018 he became responsible for the Ads & Commerce teams, including search, display and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. He’s helped drive double-digit growth, while remaining centered on longstanding principles of user trust and fair value exchange among users, publishers, and advertisers.
Prior to joining Google, Prabhakar founded and led Yahoo! Labs where he was responsible for search and ad ranking, as well as ad marketplace design, and later served as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer. He also served as CTO at Verity, and held various positions over the course of 14 years at IBM with a focus on algorithms, data mining and machine learning.
Prabhakar holds a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE; a former editor in chief for the Journal of the ACM; and was a Consulting Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. In 2009, he was awarded a Laurea honoris causa from the University of Bologna.
Authored Publications
Google Publications
Other Publications
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The Limits of Popularity-Based Recommendations, and the Role of Social Ties
Marco Bressan
Stefano Leucci
Alessandro Panconesi
Erisa Terolli
Proceedings of ACM KDD 2016, ACM
Preview abstract
In this paper we introduce a mathematical model that captures some of the salient features of recommender systems that are based on popularity and that try to exploit social ties among the users. We show that, under very general conditions, the market always converges to a steady state, for which we are able to give an explicit form. Thanks to this we can tell rather precisely how much a market is altered by a recommendation system, and determine the power of users to influence others. Our theoretical results are complemented by experiments with real world social networks showing that social graphs prevent large market distortions in spite of the presence of highly influential users.
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Current trends in the integration of searching and browsing
Preview
Yoelle S. Maarek
Krishna Bharat
Susan T. Dumais
Steve Papa
Jan O. Pedersen
WWW (Special interest tracks and posters) (2005), pp. 793
Models for the Compressible Web
Flavio Chierichetti
Ravi Kumar
Alessandro Panconesi
SIAM Journal on Computing (2013)
Are web users really Markovian?
Markov Layout
An Algorithmic Treatment of Strong Queries.
An algorithmic treatment of strong queries
Optimizing two-dimensional search results presentation
The Quantitative Analysis of User Behavior Online - Data, Models and Algorithms
CSR (2010), pp. 327
Search is dead!: long live search
Elizabeth F. Churchill
Marti Hearst
Barney Pell
WWW (2010), pp. 1337-1338
Heavy Tails and Models for the Web and Social Networks
ICDCN (2010), pp. 2
The FUNnest Talks That belong to FUN (Abstract)
FUN (2010), pp. 3
The Quantitative Analysis of User Behavior Online - Data, Models and Algorithms
SWAT (2010), pp. 163
Online story scheduling in web advertising
Some results of Christos Papadimitriou on internet structure, network routing, and web information
Models for the Compressible Web
Flavio Chierichetti
Ravi Kumar
Alessandro Panconesi
FOCS (2009), pp. 331-340
Next Generation Web Search
Models for the Compressible Web.
Compressed web indexes
On compressing social networks.
Flavio Chierichetti
Ravi Kumar
Michael Mitzenmacher
Alessandro Panconesi
KDD2009
On compressing social networks
Flavio Chierichetti
Ravi Kumar
Michael Mitzenmacher
Alessandro Panconesi
KDD (2009), pp. 219-228
Heavy Tails and Web Models
SUM (2008), pp. 4
The Changing Face of Web Search
CPM (2008), pp. 4
Introduction to information retrieval
Christopher D. Manning
Hinrich Schütze
Cambridge University Press (2008), I-XXI, 1-482
Visualizing tags over time
Micah Dubinko
Ravi Kumar
Joseph Magnani
Jasmine Novak
TWEB, vol. 1 (2007)
Web Search: Bridging Information Retrieval and Microeconomic Modeling
HiPC (2007), pp. 6
Finding near neighbors through cluster pruning
Flavio Chierichetti
Alessandro Panconesi
Mauro Sozio
Alessandro Tiberi
Eli Upfal
PODS (2007), pp. 103-112
Web search: from information retrieval to microeconomic modeling
CIKM (2007), pp. 1-2
Visualizing tags over time
Micah Dubinko
Ravi Kumar
Joseph Magnani
Jasmine Novak
WWW (2006), pp. 193-202
Guest Editors' Introduction
The changing face of web search: algorithms, auctions and advertising
STOC (2006), pp. 129
Using PageRank to Characterize Web Structure
Core algorithms in the CLEVER system
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
ACM Trans. Internet Techn., vol. 6 (2006), pp. 131-152
The Changing Face of Web Search
MDM (2006), pp. 2
The Changing Face of Web Search
PAKDD (2006), pp. 11
Incentive networks
KDD (2005), pp. 1
Automatic Subspace Clustering of High Dimensional Data
Rakesh Agrawal
Johannes Gehrke
Dimitrios Gunopulos
Data Min. Knowl. Discov., vol. 11 (2005), pp. 5-33
Query Incentive Networks
ASIAN (2005), pp. 19-21
On the Bursty Evolution of Blogspace
Ravi Kumar
Jasmine Novak
World Wide Web, vol. 8 (2005), pp. 159-178
Incentive Networks
LA-WEB (2005)
Query Incentive Networks
Encoding XML in Vector Spaces
Variable latent semantic indexing
Segmentation problems
Social Networks and the Web
AWIC (2004), pp. 1
Multidimensional Cube Packing
Yoshiharu Kohayakawa
Flávio Keidi Miyazawa
Yoshiko Wakabayashi
Algorithmica, vol. 40 (2004), pp. 173-187
Anti-aliasing on the web
Propagation of trust and distrust
Structure and evolution of blogspace
Efficiency-Quality Tradeoffs for Vector Score Aggregation
SETS: search enhanced by topic segmentation
Auditing Boolean attributes
Jon M. Kleinberg
Christos H. Papadimitriou
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 66 (2003), pp. 244-253
Dynamic schemes for speculative execution of code
Building low-diameter peer-to-peer networks
Gopal Pandurangan
Eli Upfal
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 21 (2003), pp. 995-1002
Editorial: Preserving excellence through change
J. ACM, vol. 50 (2003), pp. 427-428
Extracting and Exploiting Structure in Text Search
SIGMOD Conference (2003), pp. 635
On the bursty evolution of blogspace
Symphony: Distributed Hashing in a Small World
Gurmeet Singh Manku
Mayank Bawa
USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems (2003)
Social Networks: From the Web to the Enterprise
IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 6 (2002), pp. 91-94
More on random walks, electrical networks, and the harmonic k-server algorithm
Yair Bartal
Marek Chrobak
John Noga
Inf. Process. Lett., vol. 84 (2002), pp. 271-276
Using PageRank to Characterize Web Structure
Query Strategies for Priced Information
Moses Charikar
Ronald Fagin
Venkatesan Guruswami
Jon M. Kleinberg
Amit Sahai
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 64 (2002), pp. 785-819
Competitive recommendation systems
Thematic mapping - from unstructured documents to taxonomies
Christina Yip Chung
Raymond Lieu
Jinhui Liu
Alpha K. Luk
Jianchang Mao
CIKM (2002), pp. 608-610
Mining Significant Associations in Large Scale Text Corpora
The Web and Social Networks
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
IEEE Computer, vol. 35 (2002), pp. 32-36
A deterministic (2-2/(k+1))n algorithm for k-SAT based on local search
Evgeny Dantsin
Andreas Goerdt
Edward A. Hirsch
Ravi Kannan
Jon M. Kleinberg
Christos H. Papadimitriou
Uwe Schöning
Theor. Comput. Sci., vol. 289 (2002), pp. 69-83
Adversarial queuing theory
Allan Borodin
Jon M. Kleinberg
Madhu Sudan
David P. Williamson
J. ACM, vol. 48 (2001), pp. 13-38
Recommendation Systems: A Probabilistic Analysis
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 63 (2001), pp. 42-61
Building Low-Diameter P2P Networks
On Semi-Automated Web Taxonomy Construction
Social Networks on the Web and in the Enterprise
Web Intelligence (2001), pp. 58-60
Structured and Unstructured Search in Enterprises
IEEE Data Eng. Bull., vol. 24 (2001), pp. 15-18
Multidimensional Cube Packing
Yoshiharu Kohayakawa
Flávio Keidi Miyazawa
Yoshiko Wakabayashi
Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics, vol. 7 (2001), pp. 110-113
Navigating large-scale semi-structured data in business portals
Mani Abrol
Neil Latarche
Uma Mahadevan
Jianchang Mao
Rajat Mukherjee
Michel Tourn
John Wang
Grace Zhang
VLDB (2001), pp. 663-666
Clustering Categorical Data: An Approach Based on Dynamical Systems
Auditing Boolean Attributes
Graph structure in the Web
Ravi Kumar
Farzin Maghoul
Sridhar Rajagopalan
Raymie Stata
Janet L. Wiener
Computer Networks, vol. 33 (2000), pp. 309-320
The Web as a Graph
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
D. Sivakumar
Eli Upfal
PODS (2000), pp. 1-10
Graph Structure of the Web: A Survey
LATIN (2000), pp. 123-125
Random graph models for the web graph
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
D. Sivakumar
Eli Upfal
FOCS (2000), pp. 57-65
Markov Paging
Latent Semantic Indexing: A Probabilistic Analysis
Christos H. Papadimitriou
Hisao Tamaki
Santosh Vempala
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 61 (2000), pp. 217-235
Random walks with ``back buttons'' (extended abstract)
Ronald Fagin
Anna R. Karlin
Jon M. Kleinberg
Sridhar Rajagopalan
Ronitt Rubinfeld
Madhu Sudan
STOC (2000), pp. 484-493
A Time-Space Tradeoff for Undirected Graph Traversal by Walking Automata
Paul Beame
Allan Borodin
Walter L. Ruzzo
Martin Tompa
SIAM J. Comput., vol. 28 (1999), pp. 1051-1072
Combinatorial and experimental results for randomized point matching algorithms
Extracting Large-Scale Knowledge Bases from the Web
On targeting Markov segments
Moses Charikar
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
STOC (1999), pp. 99-108
The Web as a Graph: Measurements, Models, and Methods
Jon M. Kleinberg
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
COCOON (1999), pp. 1-17
Mining the Web's Link Structure
Soumen Chakrabarti
Byron Dom
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
David Gibson
Jon M. Kleinberg
IEEE Computer, vol. 32 (1999), pp. 60-67
Topic Distillation and Spectral Filtering
Soumen Chakrabarti
Byron Dom
David Gibson
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
Artif. Intell. Rev., vol. 13 (1999), pp. 409-435
Trawling the Web for Emerging Cyber-Communities
Ravi Kumar
Sridhar Rajagopalan
Computer Networks, vol. 31 (1999), pp. 1481-1493
Automatic Resource Compilation by Analyzing Hyperlink Structure and Associated Text
Soumen Chakrabarti
Byron Dom
Sridhar Rajagopalan
David Gibson
Jon M. Kleinberg
Computer Networks, vol. 30 (1998), pp. 65-74
Approximation Schemes for Euclidean k-Medians and Related Problems
Automatic Subspace Clustering of High Dimensional Data for Data Mining Applications
Rakesh Agrawal
Johannes Gehrke
Dimitrios Gunopulos
SIGMOD Conference (1998), pp. 94-105
Recommendation Systems: A Probabilistic Analysis
Latent Semantic Indexing: A Probabilistic Analysis
Clustering Categorical Data: An Approach Based on Dynamical Systems
Stochastic Contention Resolution With Short Delays
Scalable Feature Selection, Classification and Signature Generation for Organizing Large Text Databases into Hierarchical Topic Taxonomies
Inferring Web Communities from Link Topology
A Microeconomic View of Data Mining
Jon M. Kleinberg
Christos H. Papadimitriou
Data Min. Knowl. Discov., vol. 2 (1998), pp. 311-324
Segmentation Problems
On a theory of computing symposia
Dynamic Schemes for Speculative Execution of Code
Randomized Query Processing in Robot Path Planning
Lydia E. Kavraki
Jean-Claude Latombe
Rajeev Motwani
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 57 (1998), pp. 50-66
A Random Sampling Scheme for Path Planning
Jérôme Barraquand
Lydia E. Kavraki
Jean-Claude Latombe
Tsai-Yen Li
Rajeev Motwani
I. J. Robotic Res., vol. 16 (1997), pp. 759-774
Locality-Preserving Hashing in Multidimensional Spaces
The Electrical Resistance of a Graph Captures its Commute and Cover Times
Ashok K. Chandra
Walter L. Ruzzo
Roman Smolensky
Prasoon Tiwari
Computational Complexity, vol. 6 (1997), pp. 312-340
Strategic directions in research in theory of computing
Anne Condon
Faith Fich
Greg N. Frederickson
Andrew V. Goldberg
David S. Johnson
Michael C. Loui
Steven Mahaney
John E. Savage
Alan L. Selman
David B. Shmoys
SIGACT News, vol. 28 (1997), pp. 75-93
Navigating in Unfamiliar Geometric Terrain
How much can hardware help routing?
Using Taxonomy, Discriminants, and Signatures for Navigating in Text Databases
Information Retrieval Algorithms: A Survey
SODA (1997), pp. 11-18
Computational Geometry Impact Potential: A Business and Industrial Perspective
CCCG (1996), pp. 276
Combinatorial and Experimental Results for Randomized Point Matching Algorithms
Time-Space Tradeoffs for Undirected Graph Traversal by Graph Automata
Paul Beame
Allan Borodin
Walter L. Ruzzo
Martin Tompa
Inf. Comput., vol. 130 (1996), pp. 101-129
Adversarial Queueing Theory
Allan Borodin
Jon M. Kleinberg
Madhu Sudan
David P. Williamson
STOC (1996), pp. 376-385
A Linear Method for Deviation Detection in Large Databases
A Theory of Wormhole Routing in Parallel Computers
Competitive Paging with Locality of Reference
Allan Borodin
Sandy Irani
Baruch Schieber
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 50 (1995), pp. 244-258
Robust Algorithms for Packet Routing in a Mesh
Mathematical Systems Theory, vol. 28 (1995), pp. 1-11
The Worst-Case Running Time of the Random Simplex Algorithm is Exponential in the Height
Martin E. Dyer
Alan M. Frieze
Eli Upfal
Inf. Process. Lett., vol. 56 (1995), pp. 79-81
Motion planning for a steering-constrained robot through moderate obstacles
Randomized query processing in robot path planning (Extended Abstract)
Stochastic contention resolution with short delays
Randomized Algorithms
Memory versus randomization in on-line algorithms
Efficient routing in all-optical networks
The Traveling Cameraman Problem, with Applications to Automatic Optical Inspection
Motion Planning on a Graph (Extended Abstract)
Computing with Noisy Information
Trading Space for Time in Undirected s-t Connectivity
Anna R. Karlin
Eli Upfal
SIAM J. Comput., vol. 23 (1994), pp. 324-334
Guest Editor's Foreword: Special Issue on On-Line Algorithms
Algorithmica, vol. 11 (1994), pp. 1
Randomized Approximation Algorithms in Combinatorial Optimization
FSTTCS (1994), pp. 300-317
The minimum latency problem
Avrim Blum
Prasad Chalasani
Don Coppersmith
William R. Pulleyblank
Madhu Sudan
STOC (1994), pp. 163-171
Fast Deflection Routing for Packets and Worms (Extended Summary)
Random Walks on Weighted Graphs and Applications to On-line Algorithms
Randomized Algorithms and Pseudorandom Numbers
How much can hardware help routing?
Exact Analysis of Hot-Potato Routing (Extended Abstract)
A Theory of Wormhole Routing in Parallel Computers (Extended Abstract)
Optimal Time Bounds for Some Proximity Problems in the Plane
Alok Aggarwal
Herbert Edelsbrunner
Prasoon Tiwari
Inf. Process. Lett., vol. 42 (1992), pp. 55-60
Markov Paging (Extended Abstract)
Integer Programming in VLSI Design
Discrete Applied Mathematics, vol. 40 (1992), pp. 29-43
An Experimental Study of Wormhole Routing in Parallel Computers
Fast Geometric Approximation Techniques and Geometric Embedding Problems
Marshall W. Bern
Howard J. Karloff
Baruch Schieber
Theor. Comput. Sci., vol. 106 (1992), pp. 265-281
Multiterminal Global Routing: A Deterministic Approximation Scheme
On the Parallel Complexity of Evaluating Game Trees
Competitive Paging with Locality of Reference (Preliminary Version)
Navigating in Unfamiliar Geometric Terrain (Preliminary Version)
Deferred Data Structure for the Nearest Neighbor Problem
Asymptotically Tight Bounds for Computing with Faulty Arrays of Processors (Extended Abstract)
Christos Kaklamanis
Anna R. Karlin
Frank Thomson Leighton
Victor Milenkovic
Satish Rao
Clark D. Thomborson
A. Tsantilas
FOCS (1990), pp. 285-296
Random Walks on Weighted Graphs, and Applications to On-line Algorithms (Preliminary Version)
Randomized Broadcast in Networks
Uriel Feige
David Peleg
Eli Upfal
SIGAL International Symposium on Algorithms (1990), pp. 128-137
Randomized Broadcast in Networks
Uriel Feige
David Peleg
Eli Upfal
Random Struct. Algorithms, vol. 1 (1990), pp. 447-460
Time-Space Tradeoffs for Undirected Graph Traversal
Computing with Unreliable Information (Preliminary Version)
The Electrical Resistance of a Graph Captures its Commute and Cover Times (Detailed Abstract)
Ashok K. Chandra
Walter L. Ruzzo
Roman Smolensky
Prasoon Tiwari
STOC (1989), pp. 574-586
Parallel Graph Algorithms That Are Efficient on Average
Fast Geometric Approximation Techniques and Geometric Embedding Problems
Marshall W. Bern
Howard J. Karloff
Baruch Schieber
Symposium on Computational Geometry (1989), pp. 292-301
Program Correctness: Can One Test For It?
Trading Space for Time in Undirected s-t Connectivity
Robust Algorithms for Packet Routing in a Mesh
SPAA (1989), pp. 344-350
Memory Versus Randomization in On-line Algorithms (Extended Abstract)
Randomized Algorithms and Pseudorandom Numbers
Energy Consumption in VLSI Circuits (Preliminary Version)
Probabilistic Construction of Deterministic Algorithms: Approximating Packing Integer Programs
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 37 (1988), pp. 130-143
Parallel Graph Algorithms that Are Efficient on Average
Randomized rounding: a technique for provably good algorithms and algorithmic proofs
Probabilistic Construction of Deterministic Algorithms: Approximating Packing Integer Programs
FOCS (1986), pp. 10-18
A language for describing rectilinear Steiner tree configurations
Provably Good Routing in Graphs: Regular Arrays
