Facebook Inc. previously used Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. However, now, the social networking site no longer includes search results from Bing; this news was also confirmed by a spokesperson from Facebook Inc. The main reason for discontinuing Bing is that the social networking giant has introduced its own search tool now. The tool allows users to search for old comments and information that their friends posted on their accounts or in groups.
The market for Web Search Technology is dominated, undisputed, by Google Inc. The decision of Facebook to ditch Bing’s search results to make way for its own search tools shows that the company has realized the importance of web search technology. But the question is will it pose any threat to Google? That remains to be seen, but if anyone can challenge Google’s supremacy, it’s Facebook.
Facebook.com searches aim at helping the users find their friends and family members on the website and other information on profiles and timelines of billions of Facebook.com users. The search tool has long been used. For several years, the search results from Facebook.com included links from Bing.
A spokesperson from Facebook Inc. said that the Facebook search will no longer show search results from Bing as it is focusing more on what people have shared and posted on Facebook. However, the important thing to note here is that this move does not end the partnership between Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
Mark Zuckerberg, the celebrated CEO of Facebook Inc., said that one of the key growth initiatives of the company is search. Over 1 billion search queries are made on Facebook.com on a daily basis. Over one billion Facebook users share a large amount of information on the website. According to Zuckerberg, pretty soon this information will eliminate the need to search the web for answers.
Zuckerberg said in July that his search engineers pointed out that there are one trillion posts on Facebook daily, which is larger than Web search corpus. Microsoft’s Bing is the second largest web search engine in the U.S. It has a 20% share in the market.
The long and healthy relationship between Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. started in 2007, October, when the latter invested $240 million in the former to acquire a 1.6% stake in the company. A part of this deal was that Microsoft Corp. will provide banner ads for Facebook.com in the international market.
In 2010, Facebook Inc. stopped using banner ads from Microsoft. This was a part of Facebook’s move to take greater control over its advertising business. However, during this same time, Facebook had expanded its use of Bing search results.
Now, Facebook has made a move to remove the search results of Bing so that its searches are narrowed only to the posts on the website, Facebook.com. Considering the amount of information posted daily on Facebook, it is likely that Zuckerberg’s prediction may come true soon in the future. Let’s see what the future holds for Facebook.com search.
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