Microsoft begs Facebook, please don’t bounce Bing

While Google is certainly a monster in many ways, there is at least one ‘Sully in the closet' for the search engine super champ – and that's the idea of Facebook launching its own search engine.

While that prospect might make Google worried enough to look under the bed at night, it's certainly more than enough to prevent Microsoft sleeping at all. KitGuru ponders the numbers and decides if Microsoft needs a cup of warm milk.

The first time a market exploded without Microsoft, the subject was browsers and the Dark Lord of the Sith was Nutscrape. Nine generations of Internet Explorer later and Gates' legacy can feel confident that they are here to stay – at least in the PC/laptop space.

Since then, search engines and social networking have exploded onto the scene and Microsoft has been left scrambling. Not only that, but it has taken multiple attempts to create a half-decent search engine product in Bing.

Actually, that's not fair. Bing does a few things very well. It's great for adult content and the video preview option is amazingly useful. Hmm. Would that be the kind of advantage that Microsoft was looking for?  Maybe not, but it will take any win it can.

Why?

Well, the numbers simply do not add up.

Despite the best efforts of man, beast, Bing and Co – Google still pwns two thirds of the world's searches, while Bing struggles to maintain just 15%.

Microsoft owns almost 2% of Facebook and its keen to build bridges with the social networking giant. Part of that bridge building will be the interlinking of Bing with Facebook users/data.

This could be viewed as a chamois leather polishing of Orwell's 1984 nightmare – or as something quite useful. As with all things, we'll need to see the application and back-end gubbins to know what's really what. For now, if we believe in the goodness of Microsoft, then we can see that a photographer looking for a great venue near Brighton, might benefit from knowing that Facebook users in East Sussex all recommend one spot for shooting birds with a dirty great lens.

As a nod to open standards etc, Microsoft promises that it will also do some linkages with Google, but we'd expect these to be as plentiful as steaks at a vegan wedding.

KitGuru says: Knowing that Facebook would become the world's number 2 search engine – simply by launching a search engine – must scare the crap out of online lightweights like Microsoft, Yahoo and co. If you think this is fun, wait until Facebook launch Zuckerberg dollars.

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