Facebook, Microsoft gang up on Google

Microsoft cemented its partnership with Facebook this week, a move that could represent the biggest threat to Google’s search standing yet.

Microsoft and Facebook announced that they’re teaming up to make Internet searching more social. Now when someone uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine to look for a new car or a book, she can see which ones her Facebook friends liked. It will now be easier for searchers to get their friends’ opinions before they make purchasing decisions.

Industry watchers said this was an interesting development for search in general, but it also holds big implications for Google in particular. What’s notable is that Facebook turned to Microsoft for this deal and not to the search market leader, Google.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at the press conference on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Wash., on Wednesday, said there was a specific reason he wanted to go with Bing.

“They really are the underdog here,” Zuckerberg said. “They’re incentivized to go out and innovate. They have all these smart people and are trying to do all these new things.”

Google, not surprisingly, dismissed the notion that the deal may have any far-reaching implications and said it welcomes the challenge.

“We welcome competition that helps deliver useful information to users and expands user choice,” said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman, in an e-mail to Computerworld. “Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space. It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that.”

But industry analysts said this Microsoft-Facebook partnership could spell trouble for Google, despite the fact that the search giant handled 72.15% of all U.S. searches last month.

And what could make this situation more interesting is that Google is reportedly working on launching its own social network. Rumored to be dubbed Google Me, it’s considered to be Google’s shot at creating a Facebook killer.

Google hasn’t had a lot of luck in the social networking arena. Its Google Wave social networking service was shut down in August and reviews of Google Buzz were lackluster. But the company has learned from its failures and may be ready to try to pull some of those advertising dollars away from Facebook.

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