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Facebook, Microsoft revise partnership
Mon, 08 Feb 2010 by William Hobson

The partnership between Microsoft and Facebook has been altered as the two companies revise how their respective search and social media platforms complement each other.

In a post on the Bing Search blog, the search engine’s General Manager, Jon Tinter, announced that in 2010, Microsoft would be “stepping up” their collaboration with their “valued partner” to provide a “more complete search experience”.

The first significant aspect of this “enhanced” relationship is that the Bing-Facebook search integration will expand outside of the US for the first time; currently Bing powers web search results on Facebook in the US. This relationship will be extended to the international audience of Facebook users, with obvious benefits for the Google-rival. “Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook” said Tinter.

As the search-integration deal is extended, Bing and Facebook also plan on incorporating more of Bing’s features into Facebook. Tinter says that in the future, Facebook will provide “full access to great Bing features beyond a set of links, including richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions.”

The second significant aspect is that though Microsoft will continue to handle search engine marketing for Facebook, including PPC search ads on Facebook results, Facebook will take over responsibility for selling hosted display advertisements on its own site.

“Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy” said Tinter. “MS will continue to provide search advertisements to Facebook.”