Microsoft quells Kumo rumours

Friday 13 March 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Speculation is rife that Microsoft is planning to re-brand Live Search as Kumo. The rumours follow glimpses of www.kumo.com – now unavailable – as a search engine homepage emblazoned with Microsoft's Kumo logo. The gossip was initially rejected by the Washington-based giant but a company representative later admitted "Microsoft is using the Kumo.com URL for internal testing purposes only. Given the depth and breadth of our current online service offering, we recognize a need to sharply define and align our online brands. However, we have nothing new to announce at this time."

A leaked internal memo sent to Microsoft employees has surfaced that confirms that the internal testing is taking place. Clearly, Microsoft knows that Live Search is just not up to the job, but how effective will its replacement be?

Screenshots of the prototype Kumo homepage – featuring an ornately carved and painted Chinese dragon – are flying around the web like some kind of illicit material. Meanwhile, pundits are left wondering whether Microsoft's new baby will really be dynamic enough to pull traffic away from its arch rival, Google.

Kumo.com

Image courtesy of liveside.net

The Marketing Pilgrim site shows screenshots that have an impressively thorough set of search engine results, with sponsored links remaining on the right, as in Google's results. The leaked Microsoft memo promises "results organized in a way that saves you more time. An explorer pane on the left side of results pages will give you access to tools that help you with your tasks. Other features like single session history and hover preview help accomplish more in search sessions."

Kumo.com search results page

Certainly, if Bill's boys and girls can come up with the goods, there's never been a better time to launch a really sophisticated search engine – it's the Holy Grail for users and advertisers alike.

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