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“Facebook buys FriendFeed to get hands on a cool app and some more former Google employees, at the same time, Google turns up the heat on Microsoft’s Bing with something called Caffeine, competition and innovation alive and well online.” (CNBC)

The world’s largest social network - Facebook finds a friend to compete in the game of real time search engine. FriendFeed, a web content sharing service along with all of its 12 employees are now part of Facebook. The four founders of FriendFeed are former Google engineers who handled the development of Gmail and Google Maps.

Our research shows that the media have different perspectives on what Facebook’s action means to its current and potential competitors.
Julia Boorstin says on CNBC that FriendFeed might not be a big deal itself, but it could be the ultimate tool to secure Facebook’s powerhouse position.

“FriendFeed as a stand alone product was never hugely successful, never got more than 900,000 unique visitors a month, but by intergrating FriendFeed into Facebook, this could be a really useful application…This means that Facebook is key, it’s hub, and it means you’re not gonna leave Facebook for another startup that comes along and tries to be the new Facebook or the new Twitter.”

Technology blog - Tech Tree agrees that FriendFeed brings valuable assets to Facebook, and suggests the acquisition significantly increases Facebook’s ability to compete.

“Now Facebook will make use of ex-Google's excellence in expanding Facebook platform to the next paradigm: Real-time search. If Google and Twitter is listening to this, they better sit together at least for mutual partnership on Twitter's search technology.”

However, David Coursey disagrees in a commentary on PC World, a technology and business magazine. He says Facebook has no chance going against Google with or without FriendFeed.

“Merely buying four former top Google engineers when acquiring FriendFeed does not make a new search engine…Facebook has too much work to do on its core social networking platform to also build a next-generation search engine.”

On the other hand, CNBC’s Jim Goldman is positive Facebook will bring changes to the search engine competition. He thinks the FriendFeed acquisition is Facebook’s direct smack in the face at Google.

“Facebook is trying to position itself right now to say that we’re the heart of innovation, and all kinds of searches from here forward will be social while everything over at Google is far more boring and dry and al go rhythmic.”

So what do you think of Facebook buying FriendFeed? Do you think the world’s largest social network is ready to take on giants in the search engine industry such as Google?