Facebook大战谷歌：搜索之争一触即发

    我斗胆猜测，大多数Facebook用户都不会如此频繁地使用这些网页，也不会经常分享他们正在阅读的书籍或者正在听的歌曲，更不会把他们的水管工、牙医和承包商介绍给关系最近的500个好友。没有这些信息，他们对图谱搜索的贡献就很有限。我有几百个Facebook好友，而当我搜索“我朋友喜爱的位于奥克兰的披萨店”时，结果却难以令人满意——因为只返回了一条结果。（Facebook常规用户可以点击此处申请使用图谱搜索。）

    当然，在搜索行业，谷歌从不会过时。公司已经有了Google+的社交网络。尽管缺少Facebook的活跃度，它却能够作为基础，让谷歌随时建立起能与图谱搜索抗衡的服务。（《财富》2011年的封面故事中曾提到，这场战争已经持续了很长时间。）

    扎克伯格在记者招待会上的轻描淡写也许就是他对货币化的回应。他说：“久而久之，这可能会成为一个潜在的商机。”目前，图谱搜索没有广告。但是当人们开始大量搜索餐馆等商店时，大量的相关企业就会愿意掏钱给Facebook，好让自己在搜索结果中占据有利的位置。扎克伯格说，在考虑植入广告前，Facebook会专心改善产品，让它能支持手机和多种语言。

    扎克伯格说：“我觉得它是这段时间内我们最了不起的成就之一。”许多Facebook分析人士也同意这种说法。如果Facebook在灾难性的首次公开募股后四面楚歌，扎克的团队则再次将目标瞄准了谷歌，提醒这位最强劲的竞争对手：尽管它一时低迷，却绝不会就此出局。

    噢，对了，两位巨头在今后几年展开竞争的同时，必将产生附带损害。周二，点评网站Yelp在谷歌之前受到了Facebook图谱搜索的影响，股票下跌了6%。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    I'd venture a guess that the majority of Facebookers are more parsimonious in their usage of the site and may not regularly share what they're reading or listening to, let alone recommend their plumber, dentist or contractor to their closest 500 friends. Without that information, their contribution to the search graph will be limited. I have hundreds of Facebook friends, yet the answer to the query "pizza places in Oakland that my friends like" was hardly satisfying—it listed just one result. (Regular Facebook users can request access to graph search here.)

    And of course, Google has never been known for taking its eye off the ball when it comes to search. The company already has a social network in Google+. While it lacks the level of activity that Facebook enjoys, it could readily serve as the basis for Google to build a rival graph search service. (As Fortune chronicled in its 2011 cover story, this battle has been a long time coming.)

    The biggest understatement of the press conference may well have been Zuckerberg's response to the question of monetization. "This could potentially be a business over time," he said. For now, graph search has no ads. But if people start searching for restaurants of stores in large numbers, plenty of those businesses will be willing to pay Facebook in exchange for preferential placement in search results. Zuckerberg said Facebook would focus on improving the product, and rolling it out on mobile phones and in other languages, before it considers taking ads.

    "This is one of the coolest things that I think we have done in a while," Zuckerberg said. Many Facebook analysts agree. If Facebook appeared beleaguered after its disastrous IPO, Zuck's crew is gunning for Google again, reminding its biggest rival that while it was down for while it certainly wasn't out.

    Oh, and as the two giants battle it out in the coming years, there is bound to be collateral damage. On Tuesday, shares of Yelp (YELP), which risks being tripped up by Facebook's graph search sooner than Google will, dropped more than 6%.