Facebook has killed a search deal it had in place with Microsoft's Bing.

The move is unsurprising. In fact, your correspondent noted in early 2013 that the Mark Zuckerberg-run company was clearly shifting away from its dependence on the software giant when he unveiled Facebook's Graph Search product.

At the time, we asked Zuck about his relationship status with Microsoft. The Register got an "it's complicated" response.

With the arrival of Graph Search on Facebook, Bing's integration abruptly stopped at the web search level.

In other words, Microsoft's search engine only kicked in when Facebook's own querying system failed to deliver the relevant results.

But, for nearly two years now, Microsoft's search function has been unable to ferret around within Facebook's social graph where the real ad money is understood to be found.

And now, as noted by Reuters, Facebook has altogether dumped Microsoft, following the launch of its rejigged search product earlier this week.

Facebook insisted that it still had "a great partnership with Microsoft in lots of different areas." Indeed, Redmond sunk $240m into the then fledgling behavioural network back in 2007.

But, with Facebook's strategy to more aggressively take on search, any soul-searching about its special relationship with Microsoft appears to have fizzled out. ®