Facebook drops Bing in favor of its own search tool

Facebook recently gave its Graph Search feature an update which allowed users to search the social network for specific posts, which enabled people to search for far more than just people. Up until a few days ago, web results were also displayed thanks to Bing, but Facebook has quietly removed this feature.

Reuters was the first to report that Facebook was dropping Microsoft’s search engine, which a spokesperson for Facebook later confirmed, saying: “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.”

Microsoft’s statement to VentureBeat was much the same, with a spokesperson saying: “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.”

Not many people are going to miss this feature, not that anyone expected them to. Back when Facebook first integrated Bing into Graph Search last January, even Mark Zuckerberg agreed that few people were likely to use Facebook to search the web, saying: “We don’t think a lot of people will come to Facebook to do web searches.”

However, there have been quite a few rumors that the social networking giant is toying around with the idea of entering the search engine game and taking on the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. While Facebook has neither confirmed nor denied this, many analysts suggest that this is the next logical move for the company.