• Reuters, Wednesday, September 5, 2007 10:15 AM

Facebook has started notifying members that its pages will soon be open to Google, Yahoo and other search engines whose crawlers index billions of pages across the Web. The move, clearly aimed at growing the number of page views on the social network, could spark a privacy backlash among users, although the company is marketing the move as an "opportunity" to let the rest of the world find them. Facebook users, have revolted against the site's policy changes in the past.

Of course, users will have a choice whether to keep their listings private or make their name and picture searchable by the general public. However, it's unclear whether they'll have the opportunity to make a limited public-facing page versus a private one. Facebook has previously denied search engines access to its pages; nevertheless, the changes will be introduced over the next 30 days.

Not only would publicizing member profiles help Facebook gain more page views, it would also attract new users. Facebook now has 39 million members according to Reuters, up 62.5% from 24 million in late May.

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