Hacker News Reader

It would be a trivial addition to the Facebook network to allow outside email exchanges. What I was trying to get across in the article was how Facebook is just 1 step away from directly challenging Google in email and search. Two of the biggest areas of revenue for Google. They have the purpose (money) and they have the ability. I think they're going to do it sooner than anyone expects.

View on HN

yes but your trivial "1 step" is actually - build a world class, global scale search engine that is at least as good as googles. There is no sign whatsoever that they are even trying - search in facebook is pretty basic IMO and frequently fails to find stuff I have found before using the same keywords

If they build a space ship, something that they are also "1 step" away from doing they can eat Virgins lunch too!

Sorry, I meant the email functionality is 1 step and trivial, since they already have an inbox system in place. The search would be much more difficult to do well of course, but i'd suggest a recommendation based search (like Google +1) could be up and running within a year quite easily given their resources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com