Facebook Became a Fan of Microsoft Live Search
With Yahoo (YHOO) now just a collapsed and trembling form dwindling in Microsoft’s rearview mirror, the software giant has been anxiously searching out other ways to accelerate its stalled search business. And now it appears to have found one. On Thursday afternoon, Microsoft said it is expanding its relationship with Facebook to bring its Live search and search ads to the social-networking site. “One last thing I want to talk about is an extension of our Facebook relationship where we are extending it to search and page search,” Microsoft Senior Vice President Satya Nadella told attendees at Microsoft’s annual meeting for financial analysts. “We will be providing an API to Facebook where they will create a rich search experience for the Facebook users, and that is something that they will launch in the fall working with us. And it will carry both our Web results, as well as our page-search advertising. We are excited [about this] opportunity to further expand the Live Search reach.”
Financial terms of the deal, which follows Microsoft’s (MSFT) $240 million investment in Facebook last year, were not disclosed, but are presumably pretty favorable to the social-networking site.
