Facebook is putting aggressive resources into rebuilding its search functionality, including a former Google search engineer, Lars Rasmussen. A recent article by Business Week suggests 24 people are now working full time on Facebook’s search project with the aim of feeding more of the web into its site, allowing people to search from within Facebook, rather than having to leave and use Google.
While it is unlikely Facebook will rival Google in search any time soon, what’s interesting is the potential Facebook has in this area. Google knows that its biggest potential rival in search is Facebook, not Bing or Yahoo. Why? Because Facebook can combine social search with web searches.
Google set up Google+ in a bid to have some slice of the emerging social search market. The jury is still out as to whether Google+ will ever emerge as a viable social network, but Google’s intentions are clear – it believes the future lies in social search and Facebook has the potential to dominate this area, thus dominating the entire search market in years to come.
