Facebook and Microsoft officials have both confirmed that the social networking site has removed Bing as its primary search provider over the weekend. The action follows the announcement of Facebook's own tool for finding comments and other information last week.
The move reflects Facebook's increasing focus on building out its own search products in a market that is currently dominated by rival Google. Facebook's recently announced new search tool is said to give users the ability to quickly filter through old comments and other information from friends on the site. The new feature is currently being rolled out to its 1 billion + users, so some may not have received the popup notifications regarding this as of yet.
A change of focus
"We're not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we're focused on helping people find what's been shared with them on Facebook. We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft in lots of different areas," a Facebook spokesperson told Reuters who confirmed the story on Friday. It remains unclear how many of Facebook's users were actually using its search bar to search outside of the realms of Facebook and how much traffic Microsoft received as a result of the partnership.
The two companies have a longstanding relationship starting back in 2007 when Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook for a 1.6 per cent stake in the company. Bing currently holds second place in regards to market share in the search space, with 20 per cent, lagging a considerable distance behind leader Google and its 67 per cent market share.
Both companies reassured market watchers of their good relationship, even after this split announcement. A Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat something similar to the Facebook statement quoted by Reuters above: "Facebook recently changed its search experience to focus on helping people tap into information that's been shared with them on Facebook versus a broader set of web results. We continue to partner with Facebook in many different areas."
If Facebook is attempting to dive into the incredibly competitive general search space, it will be crucial for the social network to create something that is tailored to specifically tackle/include the one trillion-plus posts it has gathered over the past decade. The site already sees over 1 billion search queries occurring every day, and Facebook's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has hinted previously that the vast amount of information Facebook users share could eventually replace the need to search the Web for answers to certain questions.
