Facebook Graph Search takes on Google Search, Google Now, but there’s no Facebook phone yet

Facebook scheduled a special media event for January 15, further fueling speculation that it will finally unveil its first piece of hardware, the Facebook smartphone that so many rumors were talking about in the not-so-distant past.

But as it turns out, the Facebook smartphone remains an unicorn product for now, although we shouldn’t be surprised to see Facebook actually build such a device in the future – truth be told though, the company doesn’t really need a Facebook handset since it’s pretty much present on most smart devices out there, with over 400 million mobile device owners using the world’s biggest social network while on the go.
Instead Facebook announced its first step into search – recent reports did suggest that Google Search will get more competition from the likes of Facebook and Amazon – which is called Graph Search, a potential rival to Google’s Google Now product.

What is Graph Search?

In short Graph Search is a complete makeover of Facebook’s existing search feature, and we’re looking at an overhaul meant to keep users inside Facebook even more and encourage new Facebook relationships in the process.
With Graph Search Facebook users will be able to search for various things inside Facebook. This isn’t a web search tool that will take on directly Google Search, but it’s a product that can better compete against Google Now to some extent for now, as it will offer users the kind of personal relationship-based search results they may be interested in on a daily basis.
With Graph Search Facebook users will be able to get answers to some very specific answers based on their interaction with friends, pictures, places and other Facebook elements. The Graph Search engine will be able to let you see what you liked on Facebook, search through products you and your friends like and/or use, find things to do or places to see based on common interests.
Similarly, Google Now offers users some highly customized search results based on what Google knows about them, and the personal assistant-like search tool will certainly be improved in the future.

Graph Search is at its beginnings as well, and it will currently be available only on the desktop Facebook version and only in English. More features will probably be added in the future, with Microsoft’s Bing handling the web search part of one’s Facebook searches.

Can Facebook Search become a Google Search true rival?

Facebook sits on a vast amount of data from its 1 billion user base. Facebook users shared 240 billion photos and there are 1 trillion of connections out there already. And who knows how many likes? With all that information at hand it can definitely build up a competitive search engine.
Even if at first it won’t target Google’s web search business, which is Google’s main revenue stream, it will still convince some Facebook users to look for information inside Facebook rather than going to Google. And the more they get used to using Graph Search, the more they’ll get used to use Facebook to get answers for their questions, web searches included.
We could be looking at the next major battle in search, with Facebook, helped by Bing for now, making a play in the business, at the expense of Google. And this battle will not be fought only when it comes to desktop searches, as it will quickly spread to mobile devices via Facebook’s existing mobile apps.
From the looks of it, Facebook will not stop at providing only social networking-based results, and Graph Search will be further developed in the coming years. And while Mark Zuckerberg said that the product will not be immediately monetized, the company will at some point make money off its growing search engine, which could harm Google’s operations on the long run.

Also worth noting is that the CEO did specify that Facebook is working with Microsoft on web searches because an agreement with Google could not be reached yet:

“We would love to work with Google. We just wanted to incorporate search, and as long as the companies are willing to honor the privacy of folks sharing content on Facebook, we’ll work with them. We just haven’t gotten it worked out with Google yet.
The main thing is that when people share something on Facebook, we want to give them the ability to broadcast things, but also retract them later, and have them be removed immediately. Microsoft was more willing to do things specific to Facebook.”

So what about privacy?

When it comes to the social networking and/or search business, privacy usually comes up. No matter who plays the game, whether Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or others, we shouldn’t be surprised to hear various privacy-related concerns, especially when it comes to social networking-based searches.
Neither Facebook nor Google are strangers to privacy-related issues, with the latter being involved in quite a few such search-related predicaments over the years, so we’re certainly interested to see how Facebook will handle the privacy side of things, especially once Graph Search evolves into a money-making product.

 

For now, Zuckerberg says that the product has been built with privacy in mind, and that it will respect the user’s privacy settings when delivering results. But we’ll tell you more about it once the new Facebook search feature becomes available to the crowds.

Google+ makes even more sense now

Considering what Facebook just announced, a social networking relationship-based search tool that will help users find people, places, common interests and photos, you can easily understand why Google badly needed to invent its own social network, and once it did why it needed to lure/convince/force as many people as possible to enable their Google+ account and start being active on it as soon as possible.
Google is well aware of the importance of complex human relationship as manifested online over social networks and the role it social networking-based search can play in the future of the search business. By launching its own social network when it did, it practically made sure it was ready to face Facebook, when the time came for the latter to realize the search potential of the huge amount of user data it administers. And it looks like Facebook is ready to play in the Search business.

  

Will you Graph Search?

The new Facebook search option will be rolling out in the near future, after the beta test period ends. However, we have no idea when it will be available to all Facebook account holders, and, more importantly, when it will be available via the Facebook mobile app, specifically the Android one.
Let’s hear it from you, Android users, are you looking forward to Graph Search – and yes, it is a strange name for a search engine?
Source: Androidauthority

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