There has been much speculation over what, if anything, Yahoo will do in search engineering and research once the deal with Microsoft kicks in and Bing begins to power Yahoo searches.

On Monday, Raghavan and his colleagues made it clear that Yahoo has no plans to completely exit the stage of search innovation.

"On the [search] content side, it would be a mistake to think of us as a version of Bing. We're not a version of Bing. We're the Yahoo Search experience and that will continue. It's completely independent of anything they choose to do," Raghavan said.

Microsoft and Yahoo struck a long-anticipated search deal in late July in which Microsoft's Bing search engine will power Yahoo's search site. The deal calls for Yahoo to sell premium search advertising services for both companies, and for Microsoft to handle the text-based, pay-per-click search ads.

The 10-year deal will start to be implemented when the companies obtain clearance from government regulators. The implementation phase could take up to two years to complete, the companies have said.