Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Kumo: The New Name Of Microsoft Live Search?

Microsoft expected to rebrand Live.com to Kumo.com

According to various rumors and reports, Microsoft’s search engine, known as Live Search will be rebranded as Kumo, as early as next year.

Apparently, the new name was already transferred from registrar to Microsoft and now Kumo.com points to a Microsoft’s internal test site.

Earlier this year during the Search Marketing Expo conference, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, hinted about a possible change of the company’s “Live” brand.

In Johnson’s opinion having multiple identities for the same online services such as MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger and MSN Messenger is confusing for the users.

In addition, Johnson explained that a brand “fix” is needed as Microsoft decided to drop its bid for Yahoo and improve its Live Search engine.

However, it remains to be seen if Kumo will be the new name of Mcirosoft’s search engine or if the compaby is trying to create just another service.

Kumo means in Japanese “cloud” and some reports are pointing out that maybe it could be related to Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative.

Launched in 2005, Live Search, Microsoft’s effort to catch up with the web giant Google, had replaced MSN Search in 2006. Despite the company’s efforts, Live Search acquired only 11 percent of the search market, far behind its main competitor, Google.

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