Facebook Would Die Without Microsoft

The social networking giant needs the Bill Gates enterprise more than people think.

"Is Bing tightly entrenched into Facebook?" Trip Chowdhry, the Managing Director of Equity Research at Global Equities Research, questioned during an interview with Benzinga. "The answer is yes. Could Bing be a default search engine for Facebook

? Yes. The relationship between Facebook and Microsoft is very strong. But we have to take it as a standalone entity and ask, 'Does Facebook have key ingredients to propel themselves into success?'" The answer, Chowdhry said, is no. "Search -- they don't own, they partner with [Microsoft]," he continued. "Second, think about video calls, video conferencing, multiple user to multiple user interaction. Facebook doesn't have that. Again, they partnered with Skype, which is a part of Microsoft. Third, contrary to what people believe, e-mail is not going to disappear. E-mail has to be a platform. Facebook partners with e-mail also. They partner with almost everyone, including Google

, Yahoo!

, Hotmail, you name it. They don't have an e-mail platform." Further, Chowdhry spoke about how Microsoft has benefitted from its investment in Facebook. "There are two kinds of indexing that is possible on Facebook," Chowdhry explained. "Almost any search engine is allowed to index the business pages or fan pages, but only Microsoft -- because it's been an investor and because they have worked really closely with Facebook -- can index both the fan pages, as well as the personal pages (personal comments specifically)."