Facebook Inc (FB), Google Inc (GOOG): Mobility Matters to these Tech Titans

Facebook Graph Search

Perhaps the biggest news for Facebook is the announced release of Graph Search, a search engine trying to make it easier to find that lost photo or restaurant recommendation and unearth other information buried within your social network. Many experts believe developing a sophisticated search feature is vital to Facebook’s long-term success, both to deepen users’ engagement and to make it more appealing to advertiser. Unlike Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s familiar search engine, which typically takes the keywords entered into a search box and matches them to the most relevant Web pages that contain them, Facebook’s search looks primarily at structured data like analyzing the virtual check boxes that people fill out on the site, like movie pages they have liked, restaurants they have checked into, the city they live in and their relationship status.

The one thing Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has going for them, and the biggest antagonist for Facebook search, is that they control nearly 25% of all North American Internet traffic, according to a recent study conducted by analytics firm DeepField. In 2010, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) represented just 6% of Internet traffic. Well over half of all devices connected to the internet are sending traffic to Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s servers on any one day, and when added up, that’s larger than that of Facebook, Twitter and Netflix combined. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is certainly still the king of search and shows no signs of letting up. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) search makes up nearly 66% of the market share for search engines, with Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ and Yahoo! Search falling behind with 16% and 11% market share, respectively.

Foolish Conclusion

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is making exhaustive efforts to take advantage of our mobile culture and will continue to do so for many years.  The increase in mobile technology and availability of mobile products will only help the social network, and if they want to get back to their IPO price of $42 dollars, they must continue to focus on the fasting segment of technology in the world.

The article Mobility Matters to these Tech Titans originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Chris Johnson.

Chris Johnson has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook and Google. Chris is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

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