FB has insane guaranteed users. Imagine a 'search the internet' or 'search videos' bar somewhere in the Facebook homepage.

Even Google knows that's dangerous.

One's local circle of friends on FB makes for perhaps 1%, in terms of its quality & value, of the overall number of signals(200?), that Google uses for its search.

Just like we come to HN for discussions, which our social circle on FB is not able to satisfy. Similarly, people will continue to go to the best search engine for searching for information.

Even today, if you want to get an overall sense of what people are thinking in general, you go to twitter search. Facebook you mostly search for persons, and what they are doing. It will be very difficult to change that.

PS: I realize my first para is speculative. And the rest is opinion.

>>Similarly, people will continue to go to the best search engine for searching for information.

There is no reason why Facebook can't become that. If Apple can make phones and Google can make phone OS. If Microsoft can make gaming consoles.

There is nothing stopping FB from doing it.

Yes, that's possible. But then it will be doing something new and different, isn't it? And it has to be more based on the spending power it has. And not related to its social network power.

Google put G+ on its home page, with not much success. Similarly, why should FB get a leverage out of just putting search on its home page. Unless the search is really better than Google's. What advantage FB has over say blekko in competing in search?

They don't need to do anything new or different. The barrier to a user to use a new search is miniscule. It's even less if you're already spending 90% of your online time on that site to begin with. G+ didn't work out because there is a huge barrier to users to become active on it. The two are vastly different.