The rumor that Facebook is creating its own search engine has been brewing for awhile. Now with Google+ making a loud splash in what have been decidedly Facebook waters up until now, it could very well wind up releasing its own product that seriously challenges Google’s territory: Search.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Earlier this year, Facebook was supposedly working on an “email killer,” which turned out to be Messages – definitely not worthy of ditching your Gmail account, but a noticeable step up in Facebook’s productivity game. But taking on search is a beast of a much bigger nature, and one that some think would be the means to establishing Facebook as a power bigger than Google. Whether or not that’s true, it looks like someone took matters into their own hands and has brought us Facebook Search.

Being powered by the Facebook Open Graph API, it’s a wonder this hasn’t happened sooner. Now you can troll Facebook posts, photos, people, pages, groups, and events for any topic and get results from across the entire site – not just your network. It’s the work of a third party developer and abides by the site’s privacy policy, and most importantly that search will not yield results that have been made private by users.

So obviously this isn’t Facebook taking over Internet-wide search – not even close. It’s really just a more efficient way to sift through all of Facebook without limitations. So is a full search engine on its way? This particular development doesn’t make us lean either way, but it’s safe to say it’s eventually going to be on Facebook’s to-do list.

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