Microsoft and Facebook Strengthen Ties

Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc. announced that they would be deepening their partnership to increase competitiveness between Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and Google, Inc. These changes would make searches more personalized by tapping into friends’ interests on Facebook. The executives at Microsoft hope that this will give users a way to distinguish Bing from Google, and hopefully choose it as their go-to search engine. This is based on the idea that people value what is relevant to their friend’s and people they identify with over what complex algorithms think will be relevant to them. However, privacy concerns have been raised because Bing will have access to all of a user’s public data, including friends and photos.

While this seems like it will be a profit-booster for Microsoft and Facebook, the privacy concerns cannot be ignored and the two companies need to consider how they will respond if ethical issues arise. The amount of information available on Facebook is incredible, and they have been under fire countless times before due to user complaints that their privacy controls are complicated and vague. However, Facebook may be taking these complaints to heart and hoping to improve CSR as they announced recently that along with two other large platform changes, they would be greatly advancing the ease and accessibility of the privacy controls. It also may be no coincidence that this comes at the same time as this change in their relationship with Microsoft. As long as Facebook is receptive to users’ concerns about privacy and remains consistent in response to ethical issues, this deepening partnership will likely reap them great profits and improved CSR.