Facebook ditches Bing, plans to introduce own search tool

Quite out of the blue, it seems that Facebook is removing Microsoft’s Bing as its search provider. Today the social network plans to launch its own new search tool. The new search engine is said to give users the ability to filter through old comments and other information from friends, allowing for a more accurate experience.

Facebook has been building its search products for a long time, using Bing as an extra layer to provide results beyond its Interest Graph — which is a refined search based on the user’s likes — in an effort to keep Google away from the world’s largest social network’s ecosystem.

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In a statement to Reuters, a Facebook spokesperson noted:

We’re not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook. We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft of lots of different areas.

In a similar tone, Microsoft responded with the following:

Facebook recently changed its search experience to focus on helping people tap into information that’s been shared with them on Facebook versus a broader set of web results. We continue to partner with Facebook in many different areas.

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According to Reuters, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there were over 1-billion search queries occurring on Facebook every day in July 2014. Given the fact that Facebook has broken ties on this end, we might see the social network starting to lay the ground work for a new feature. One that could be monetised.