Quoting an anonymous source, DNA Money reported on 2nd March, that Yahoo is scaling down its India center from a product development to a support center. This is reportedly part of the drastic changes made by Yahoo’s new CEO, Carol Bartz. This was why Sharad Sharma, Yahoo India’s R&D head, quit recently, DNA Money says. More engineers to follow him, it forecasts.

We do not have the benefit of an unnamed leak. But we are skeptical about the demotion argument as it goes against a new, powerful wind that is sweeping the IT world, including India. 1) Major software product companies, including Yahoo, now see themselves as 'platforms' than application developers. Platforms are technology environments that allow outside or ‘third party’ programmers to develop applications that can be run along with company's other products.

For example, an outside programmer, using Yahoo's platform can develop new features to make Yahoo Mail more useful to readers.2) Till recently work like these was done only by the employees of companies who worked behind a closed technical curtain. It was the job of a few hundred or thousand company employees to figure out what users wanted.

But by opening up their platforms, companies are trying to tap the talent spread over millions of programmers in the world. So, the next killer feature in Yahoo Mail may come from a programmer, living in your street, who has been able to read the users mind better.

There are different ways for outside developers to make money from developing new applications using popular platforms such as Yahoo, Nokia, Facebook and Google.3) This is a number game. The more developers a company manages to pocket, the better are its chances of adding more features. India with its millions of developers is a goldmine for global product companies. Of late, most of them have been going all out to mobilize Indian developers.

The majority of Nokia’s worldwide developers are in India. But Yahoo, with reportedly 7 million Indian developers, is ahead in this game. 4) How important is India for Yahoo? Yahoo organizes Open Hack Days world over to network with third party developers.

It has held 7 Open Hack Days so far and two of them in India. David Filo, Yahoo's co-founder, was in India in February 2009 to participate in the latest Open Hack Day. He spent 2 days in Taj, moving around in a red T-shirt, encouraging young Indian developers to develop applications for Yahoo. Yahoo demoting India! Give us a break.