Facebook to launch search engine

Social media behemoth Facebook today announced at a “mystery event” that it is creating its own search engine.

Speaking from the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the service, dubbed Graph Search.

Zuckerberg, 28, stressed that the new product was “very, very different” to web search engines offered by other tech giants such as Google because it only looks for data on Facebook itself.

It will allow users to search for people, photos, places and other content that has already been shared on the social network.

The announcement came after fevered speculation over what would be unveiled at today’s “come see what we’re building” presentation.

Some reports had suggested Facebook – which has one billion users worldwide - would be moving into hardware with a smartphone or tablet product of its own.