A team of more than 20 Facebook engineers — led by a former Google programmer — is at work on a vastly improved search engine within the site, according a Businessweek report.
The idea, according to two sources, is to take better advantage of the heaps of content Facebook users create on — and off — the site every day. With people sharing status updates and supporting brand pages on the network, as well as using Facebook’s “Like” button to mark articles and videos from external sites, there is certainly a lot to take advantage of.
To date, Facebook hasn’t made search a priority, and it shows. The prominent white box at the top of each page is good at helping users find other members. It’ll also spit back Facebook pages for brands and locations, recent status updates from friends, and general Web search results powered by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing search engine.
If the Businessweek report is true, however, it will add yet another area of heightened competitive overlap between the two Silicon Valley giants.
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