Now Facebook doesn’t really compete for ad dollars for “evasion of the request”. How Sandberg implies that this is where Google reigns. But Facebook doesn’t need to compete directly with Google web search to participate in research revenue or bring the most comprehensive website in the arena request fulfillment. A few weeks ago Facebook Engineering Manager Lars Rasmussen, a former Google employee, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he never did make sense Facebook enter into research on the web. I agree; the company probably wouldn’t compete effectively against Google and would create problems for Facebook’s relationship with Microsoft.
However, research into and within Facebook can continue to improve to the point where it becomes a valuable utility and search revenues start flowing. As Greg Finn pointed out recently, Facebook has already sponsored results in test site search. Faces FB problem is that none of us use to find local businesses, when we need one. So unless FB finds a way to change the situation, do not ever derive any SMB advertising value with FB. The combination of social signals and other content could make Facebook an interesting tool that people would start to use for all kinds of search queries. But that is all contingent on the degree that invests in Facebook and develops its own research capacities. In a way it doesn’t matter if Facebook does anything with “web search” if it improves considerably the search on Facebook.
