All Things D reported a bit ago that Facebook and Microsoft are discussing agreements to expand their search relationship, giving Bing access to Facebook’s Like data. A potential move that would strengthen the already cohesive business and development ties between the two companies.
Cool!
Social search is an emerging force for web content discovery in unique and personalized ways. We and just about everyone else have been calling this since the likes of Facebook and Twitter were parsing out their streams of data. But…
What about Google?
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated that “The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data. Failing that, there are other ways to get information.” Unfortunately, he declined to go into details about those mysterious other ways he mentioned.
As a mere spectator and web enthusiast this is, pardon my French, fucking awesome. There hasn’t been any real competition for Google since Yahoo! exited the search race (some would argue they weren’t competition even before), and this time the emerging challenger isn’t a clear cut fan favorite. Facebook and Zuck don’t exactly sport the white hats in this fight, but they are going to keep a giant on its toes. I’m going to put the closed versus open, fight for the future of the web argument on the sideline right now. For the time being, this is going to spark a lot of innovation. That makes it better for everyone. At least that’s what capitalism tells us…and this isn’t Russia is it Danny?
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