Memo to Google: Facebook has a team working on improving search
Is Facebook feeling lucky in search?
The social networking giant on the verge of a $100-billion initial public stock offering is working to improve its search product, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Former Google engineer Lars Rasmussen is leading a team of two dozen engineers trying to make it easier to sort through the mind-numbing volume of content that users create.
A more powerful search engine could pay off for Facebook. It could keep users on the site longer and it could sell keyword ads alongside search results like Google does.
It’s not likely that Facebook would try to compete with Google beyond its borders, but it could build a respectable business on the site itself and through all of the websites that its users “like.” Google controls 67% of the search market in the United States.
Rasmussen co-founded a mapping software company that he sold to Google in 2004. He went on to create Google Maps and later the far less successful Google Wave, which Google eventually shut down.
Rasmussen joined Facebook in 2010 after Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, wooed him.
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