Is Facebook Building a Search Engine to Rival Google?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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According to a report from Businessweek, Facebook has dedicated a team of 20 engineers with an ex-Google programmer at the helm working on an internal search engine for Facebook. With Google making a push for Facebook’s prime market with Google+, it stands to reason that Facebook would retaliate with a search engine. The lines between companies are beginning to blur quite a bit.

If the Businessweek report is true, however, it will add yet another area of heightened competitive overlap between the two Silicon Valley giants.
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It never works to just "match" or "lightly improve" a product and expect to beat the opposition with that tiny advantage (just look at Google+!). You either have to keep improving your product while at the same time the opposing business ignores improvements on their own, or you have you to come up with a fundamentally innovative product. I don't see how this will come of anything, change anything, or threaten google. If I remember correctly, Google was the first search engine to implement a fundamentally different method of indexing pages and deciding which were most relevant to a search (they didn't just improve on existing search engine methods at the time). So far no other company has done the same in the search-engine industry, and unless Google stops making improvements (no sign of that happening yet), no one is going to come anywhere near Google without a completely different, far more effective/efficient approach.
 
The word Search and Google are too imbedded into Society. Like when someone says "Xerox it", they mean to make a copy. When a companies name gets to be like this, you'll find it impossible to change their minds.
 
I can just see it, now it'll be easier than ever to dig up private info on anyone. :rolleyes:
 
mynamehere said:
I can just see it, now it'll be easier than ever to dig up private info on anyone. :rolleyes:
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Yeah, they will have to give results based "profiled information" gained from your friend's interests and text you type in your status etc.. There is no way facebook would begin to fight google in it's own turf.
 
A bit of a sensationalist headline. The search engine only works within their site. Doesn't compare in any way to Google's search engine.
 
Why? Facebook sucks horribly at everything they try to do. The only reason they are where they are now is because, when it counted, their competitor managed to suck even worse. They aren't on the top because they are good, they are on top because they are the defacto monopoly.
 
If you want to search people's personal lives, then sure a facebook search engine might work. There is no universal search engine, so maybe this one could have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Unfortunately, since facebook is flush with cash, it will be around forever in the same way that google will never kill google+ no matter how few people actually use it.
 
Dunno, the vibe around my friends and family as far as Facebook goes has somewhat changed over the last year. Half of the people that used to really be excited about it have stopped using it as much, a handful got tired altogether and stopped using it and the rest still seem to kinda come and go day to day.

Has it lost its sparkle? Dunno. I do know that many experts have already said that what IPO it gets to, it will be over valued, which long term is really bad for any investor.

There is also the very serious matter of Yahoo's patents being used by Facebook and others. This is very real, a point that Jerry Yang touched on long ago when he helped to turn down MS offer. He thought those patents, even then were extremely valuable. So did MS at the time when they made that huge huge HUGE offer.

Facebook is not the huge monster people think it is.

Facebook and 20 engineers even coming close to Google in that area? Uhmm .. no. 20 engineers won't get them far. 20 engineers buys them localized search features if that.
 
I can't wait for Google to be superseded by a rival that takes into consideration privacy issues. All they would need to do is encompass a more rigid base of privacy concerns, emails that do not have those "stoopid" ads that are added based on the content of the email and you have a huge winner.

Facebook ? ha, no way. I could see Apple taking this up - maybe buy out Yahoo - re-engineer it and stick up the rear end of Google.
 
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