Just out of curiosity: It's considered good manners to disclose that you have a vested interest in something you're writing. Are you also socially obligated to disclose that you plan on investing in something in the future?
Consider Google, valued at $200B has a revenue of $10.6 billion/quarter, and $2890M in profits.
Also, GOOG has been consistently growing:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii
While Facebook is failing to.
So what is the realistic value of FB? Based on these numbers, $15 billion at best.
Even easier task for them would be creating an ad content network similiar to AdSense since they can provide way more information about a visitor than Google's tracking.
This is precisely why Larry Page tries to shove Google plus into everyones throat.
[citation required]
What do you generally search for, and how can Facebook serve you relevant hits?
Actually, you can get web search results on Facebook through Bing. It is one of the side tabs on the search page. But I can't imagine many people doing that.
All of the 3 points are true. Facebook search form (that used to find friends) is used more often than Google's search. If people at Facebook can think of a good way to force people to search the Internet through the Facebook, they can get quite substantiable share of the search market. Many people have set the Facebook as their homepage.
Facebook enables better targetting. You can't for example target specific age groups with AdWords
Google plus was a response to Facebook, contrary to what Google's PR team tries to estabilish.
Remember that Microsoft made it very convenient to use MSN Search for many years by setting it to the default home page and having it in their search box of IE. It didn't work, people typed google.com and did their searches there.
And you're wrong about advertising. Facebook's is valuable but it will never be as valuable as that of people who are searching for something with the intent of buying that thing.
After reading your assertion, I Googled for the volume of Google search queries, and ran into this article -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3928298 (that I just submitted) -- which contradicts your claim, stating that Facebook search volume lags behind the other five big search engines.
On what grounds do you assert that it's true?
It wasn't a factor, but I'd also question whether or not Facebook enables better targeting. I'll concede that they have strong targeting, but I don't know that anybody can say for certain that it's 'better' than Google's, especially as Google can target ads based on what you're looking for at that particular moment.
Facebook might know that I like comic books, or Elmore Leonard novels, or what have you, but Google knows that "I want more information about vacations to Fiji". Which is the more powerful target? The latter, I would guess, especially as I already have suppliers for my other interests.
If you want a return now, you could just buy shares in a utility company for a fraction of the price, since they already make multi-billion pound/dollar profits and distribute large chunks to shareholders.
(presuming this is an English question, not a philosophical one).