At least that is what many people have opined over the recent rise of the Internet Super Giant that is Facebook.

It seems that many opinion makers believe that Facebook can punt a serious dent in Google’s popularity–if not make the Internet Mogul be completely irrelevant.

Ben Elowitz, co-founder of Blue Nile and Wetpaint, is one of the strongest believers of this.

According to him there is but one thing which makes Google the superpower that it is now: it’s algorithm which could churn out the most accurate results for everybody–anonymously.

On the other hand of the spectrum, the reason why Facebook has its edge is its determination of the interests of its users.

Elowitz further explains:

Facebook’s data allows it to do more than just guess what its customers might be interested in; the company’s data can help it know with greater certainty what its customers are really interested in. And this key difference could potentially give Facebook a tremendous advantage in search when it eventually decides to move in that direction.

If Google’s business has been built on choosing which Web pages, out of all those in the universe, are most likely to appeal to any given (but anonymous) query string, think about this: Facebook already knows, for the most part, which pages appeal to whom—specifically and directly.

And, even more powerfully, Facebook knows each of our individual and collective behavior patterns well enough to predict what we’ll like even without us expressing our intent.

Whether it is true that in the near future, Facebook will make Google tremble in fear, what seems apparent is that there will be more and more people who will  be on Facebook. Whether Facebook will move in the direction of search engines, we’ll never know.

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