Google is allowed to search through public Facebook app data

Google has been granted access to the public areas of the Facebook app from Facebook. This means that a search with the Google Android app can also return results such as public profile information, including a link to the location within the Facebook app.

The news is reported by The Wall Street Journal. Because Facebook allows so-called deep links, Google can maintain its effectiveness as a search engine. Although the search giant is perfectly capable of crawling the web pages of the Internet, Google needs permission to do the same with mobile applications. This is important to the company due to the sheer volume of apps consumers use today.

With Facebook’s permission, in addition to profiles, things like Facebook pages, groups and events can also appear in the results of the Google search application on Android in the same way that results from Contacts can now appear, for example.

Currently, Google requires web parity before an app developer can allow deep linking. That is, the content that a deep link points to must also be found on the web by Google’s crawlers separately. The company may move away from this in the future to also accommodate applications that do not have associated websites.