Facebook is no longer showing search results from Microsoft's Bing search engine , Reuters reports. The move appears to have happened four days ago, alongside the release of an updated version of Graph Search to return specific posts when searching instead of just people.
In a statement to Venture Beat, a spokesperson said that “we currently do not display web search results in Facebook search because we are focused on helping users find what has been shared on the social network.” Microsoft also said, “we continue to work with Facebook in many different areas.”
When it was first introduced in January 2013, the integration of Bing as a search engine on Facebook was seen as a way for Microsoft to compete with Google. Along with the site's semi-programmable queries, users would also be able to plug in web searches. At the time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that web search was not the core of the social network: "We don't think a lot of people are going to come to us to do web searches, but if we can't find what you're looking for, it's good to have that tool."
Indeed, the fact that we, and other websites, are now noticing the change that Microsoft itself says happened “a while ago” is clear evidence that no one uses Facebookas a default search engine.
But of course we don't feel bad for the world's largest social network because it doesn't have web search. Especially when we consider that the largest web search company certainly doesn't have social networking... or does it?
