In a world of increasing stratification, the competition between search engines, social media websites, and operating systems are fairly decided.  You’ve got Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Windows.  Sure, there are other choices out there, but the people who use Yahoo and Bing are few and far between, MySpace is slowly dying, and Apple and Linux are nowhere near threats to Windows (at least, not yet).  There’s not much chance of any of those things changing any time soon, yet there is change in the air.  Facebook is trying to become a search engine.

Increasingly, users are turning not to Google to search for things online, but Facebook, and Facebook is making this service more and more useful by tweaking their privacy settings to make more and more of your information, pictures, etc., searchable to their users.  Facebook, the social media giant, is taking on Google, the search engine giant, on Google’s own turf.  As we’ve seen from Google Buzz, Google isn’t afraid to take on Facebook, either.

This is an interesting transition.  Will Google be able to fight off their most serious challenger?  Will Facebook users revolt at the prospect of becoming search-engine fodder en masse?  What will Microsoft do to revitalize MySpace, MSN, Bing, and their struggling new media operations?  Things are going to get very interesting, very soon.  I know I wouldn’t want my private Facebook information as part of some sort of Facesearch.  How about you?