Microsoft has struck a deal with Facebook that it hopes will help its Bing search engine to close the gap to Google.
Bing will be able to take data posted on Facebook — such as users’ “likes” or preferences — and use that information to provide more relevant search results from data that Google doesn’t have.
But while the deal ostensibly helps Microsoft, it may prove to be of greater benefit to Facebook as it attempts to rebut Google’s attempted encroachments into the social Web.
“Google owned the old Web, the content-centric Web. Facebook has early leadership in the new Web, the social web,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. “This is the real long-term conflict. Microsoft in that sense, is a secondary player in this new battle.”
Facebook executives said they hoped that other search engines would also use the company’s social data in the future, but chief technology officer Bret Taylor said that Facebook was only working with Microsoft for the time being.
“Right now Microsoft is such a close partner to us that for the foreseeable future I think we just will be working with Microsoft,” said Taylor, in an interview following the announcement, which took place at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley offices.
“The thing that makes Microsoft a great partner for us is that they really are the underdog here,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg added. “Because of that they are in a structural position where they’re incentivised to go all out and innovate.”
Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007, giving it a 1.6% stake, though that is a fraction of the investments it has made in its online services division, which lost $2.3 billion last fiscal year.
Google, meanwhile is the undisputed leader in search — it handles an estimated two-thirds of all web queries, if not more, generating $6.5 billion profits from search-related advertising in 2009.
Reuters
