facebooksearch1Facebook is no longer providing results from Microsoft Bing when users conduct searches on the social network, part of a broader change in Facebook’s approach to search.

Following an update that rolled out earlier this week, searches on the social network return results such as news articles posted to Facebook and content from the user’s friends, but not web search results from Bing. The change was first reported by Reuters.

The two companies teamed up to provide users of Facebook’s Graph Search with content from around the web when the feature launched in 2013.

Facebook’s decision to go its own way underscores its evolution as a search engine in its own right. For example, searching for something like “iPhone recipe app” on Facebook would surface posts from friends about the apps that they’re using, which users might find more relevant than just a basic web search. Over time, this could put Facebook into more direct competition with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other search engines worldwide.

Microsoft confirmed that it had been dropped from the Facebook search feature.

“Facebook recently changed its search experience to focus on helping people tap into information that’s been shared with them on Facebook vs. a broader set of Web results,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement emailed to GeekWire. “We continue to partner with Facebook in many different areas.”

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