Facebook divorces Bing to focus on own search project

Social goliath Facebook has ditched Bing in a bid to extend its own search offering.

The Bing search result agreement has terminated, ending a tie-up between Microsoft and Facebook following a $240m investment in the social engine for a 1.6 % stake in the company in 2007.

The investment saw Microsoft provide the banner ads on Facebook in international markets, which ended in 2010, with the agreement being replaced with an extended use of Microsoft Bing search results,until now.

The divorce between Microsoft and Facebook comes as the social giant introduces a tool that allows users to quickly find past comments and other information posted by their friends on Facebook

Since 2010 it seems the agreement has expired, after a spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that it has now ended the search results agreement, saying: “We’re not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook. We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft in lots of different areas.”

The news follows comments made by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in July this year that hinted towards his interests in developing search as “there is more than a trillion posts, which some of the search engineers on the team like to remind me, is bigger than any Web search corpus out there.”