Speaking at TechCrunch's Disrupt event, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg talked about the potential for Facebook to launch a search engine. Zuckerberg noted Facebook is "basically doing 1 billion queries a day and we're not even trying". He added that "Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. At some point we'll do it. We have a team working on it".
He explained that users really do look to the social network to answer questions, such as where to eat sushi. This is what people want out of search, not a pile of results. “Search engines are really evolving to give you a set of answers, ‘I have a specific question, answer this question for me.’”
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If you think about all of the connected information that Facebook possesses, the company is certainly in a better position than any new startup, when it comes to building a search engine. Once you have all of that information ready to pull up in response to user’s questions, it’s just a matter of how those responses will be displayed.
