
Be Afraid, Google. Facebook Will Do Search - evo_9
http://gigaom.com/2011/03/25/facebook-search-googl/
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mkr-hn
All this talk of Facebook taking over Google's market assumes that social
search is inherently better.

There are plenty of things we search for that our friends and family wouldn't
be able to advise on. How many people on your friends list could offer advice
on any large portion of what you search for?

Facebook will probably become the go-to place for product searches, but I
think we're moving toward having a lot of domain-specific places to find
information.

I expect Google to move away from being a search engine and focus more on
being a SaaS company over the next decade. The search service is already
taking on the role of a fallback when search functions on domain-specific
sites fail.

~~~
joebadmo
I agree that social search hasn't proven to be inherently better. Social is
probably a good signal for certain things, but it's one among many. Honestly,
even for product searches, I don't think my friends and family are necessarily
the first ones I would go to. It certainly depends on the product, and even
then it only applies to certain friends/family members.

There also doesn't appear to be that much information in social. Likes and
purchase histories are the only ones I can think of. Those are both binary,
and purchase histories aren't even necessarily endorsements.

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Newky
At this point, I'm not convinced google would even be slightly concerned by
this.

We seem to read the great power of likes and social searching but unless the
search paradigm will shift or unless the actual content which we seek is
something that is shared on facebook, I can't see how they would even begin to
build a search engine related to that of Google's.

I'm not disregarding a different type of search engine, and I'm sure there are
innovative minds of facebook thinking of fresh and new ways to use the
mountains of data it has.

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MatthewPhillips
I'm very skeptical about this. There's a lot of assumptions being made about
Facebook's move into search. I'll just hit on a few (assuming they go into
search at all):

1) That they'll be good at it. Search isn't easy. It has taken Microsoft, the
most resourceful tech company, over 10 years to get search right.

2) That people will choose to use it. Very big assumption; people tend to use
tools for specific tasks. Facebook having search is certainly convenient, but
I'm not sure it trumps habit and perceived utility.

Facebook wasn't able to kill Foursquare. They weren't able to kill email. But
they'll kill Google.. why?

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hackinthebochs
Called this one a long time ago. It doesn't even have to be "social" search;
just plain-old search should make Google take notice. It's been said that
Google is the homepage of the internet. Well, facebook is quickly becoming
that to a growing number of people. If facebook has a web search box on it,
and reasonably decent results, why would an average computer user bother going
to Google for the same service? I wouldn't.

