What could Facebook's search engine look like and how is it going to be different from Google, Bing or Yahoo?

Facebook could start by making its internal content searchable. The search box on top could return content from friends, groups, or pages, when the user is logged in. These could be ranked by Likes, comments and other data that are not visible when logged in. This would allow the logged-in user to find the most relevant content with Facebook as the center of content. External links outside of Facebook could be ranked depending on how they are mentioned inside Facebook. These rankings could be applied when searching from outside Facebook. The difference is the Facebook search results would be limited to content that are declared to be public - I believe this is only . Even when a web search is done from outside Facebook, the goal is probably to drive traffic back inside the walled garden. Therefore, search results would offer a way discuss the results inside Facebook, perhaps inside existing groups, or post to the user's .

Websites like google, bing, yahoo etc crawl www and index all the contents (pages) and make it searchable. Websites like facebook, quora, stackoverflow etc generate contents, index them and create a search engine out of it. I have never done a successful search in FB. On the other hand, people started searching fb, linkedin contents from Google :)

[13th Nov, 2014 - Update after 2 years] Exactly 2 years after this answer was written, Facebook has now launched a new "Places Directory" [http://searchengineland.com/facebook-launches-new-places-directory-208105?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social] which works almost the same way I had expected. It's an internal search engine, uses the Social Graph, returns you the respective businesses' Facebook pages as results to the queries along with the reviews from within the network. It uses Bing maps, of course. Two important things has not happened, yet. 1. There are no social information associated with the results - such as how many of your friends were there already, how many recommend/reviewed/liked them, etc. 2. There are no ads yet. But that's the logical destination, isn't it? I tried a query "Chinese restaurants in Chennai" (just to stay in line with my original answer) in the top search bar, and here's what I got: [End of update. My original answer below] ---------- First off, Facebook is not going to enter into 'web search'. So there is no point in comparing such a venture with Google, Yahoo or Bing. It's going to be a different league. My speculation is, if Facebook creates a search engine, it's going to be highly monetizable. An internal search engine is perfect for it. It's not going to focus on 'informational queries', though it will do them too. The main focus will be on queries with a 'transactional intent'. Facebook has long been working on its "social graph", a part of which already have been serving Yahoo! and Bing's social results for web searches. Now within Facebook, if you search for "Taj Mahal" - what about getting results with Flights to Agra, Hotels, nearby places to visit, etc.? Or what about searching for "Chinese food" and getting a list of restaurants near you (which means their business pages in FB), reviews about them from around FB, and comments and recommendations about them from your own friends? That's a meaty way to increase engagement and make money. I think FB is too clever to divert from that direction. Not web search. No.

Very smart move by Yahoo to gain strengths with Facebook. My theory is that Apple should jump in with Facebook and Yahoo so that it can combine each others strength in their competition against Google and Microsoft. The data that comes available with it is very usefull for Apple so it can still be ahead of the game.

Google, Bing, and Yahoo will return useful results? Edit:  Based on how horrible the experience is when you search for something/someone *within* Facebook, I have a hard time believing they could create anything remotely useful.  That's on their own, structured data, and it's laughable how poor it is. Another edit:  Anyone with half a brain won't use it, because given the choice between Facebook and Google for which company you'd trust with your search history, only a fool would choose the company which is on record saying that it believes that privacy is a thing of the past.