News came out that Facebook.com’s search functionality had integrated Microsoft’s Live Search and can now be used to search the web. Not surprising when you consider that Microsoft is an investor in Facebook. But when you really think about it, this is just as silly as anything goes. Who in the world is on Facebook and wants to use it to search the web? I know I don’t. Even if you already prefered Live Search over Google, this still is very counter-intuitive. Further more, Facebook’s execution of the search results conforms to the design style of the rest of the site, which is to say that it’s not your typical search engine. I simply don’t like it… The last bit to consider is this; it’s not clear how Microsoft can really monetize from this integration, even as the result page does display related text ads.
Nice try, Microsoft… But if you really want to gain grounds on Google, you gotta try harder than this.
