'Kumo' Search to be unveiled

Here we go: before we can even get used to Wolfram Alpha and its unique way of giving search results, Microsoft is said to be planning to unveil its newest search engine, Kumo, next week. What happened to Live Search? Wasn't Live, which has been 'updated' several times, supposed to have been the 'killer'? Microsoft, from before, should have named Live Search, Kumo,and then worked on it, fine tuning it to compete with Google and Yahoo. As it is, Live Search, is incomplete and not at all competent or good enough. And now it means that, probably - all the other Windows Live products will be Kumoed too.

Microsoft spent an enormous amount of resources and time, on Windows Live, and now it's doing the same with Kumo. Unlike before with Live - which Microsoft vigorously and aggressively advertised, with 90,000 Microsoft employees currently testing Kumo, Microsoft is being rather very reserved and quiet about its new product.

Kumo is said to be a three-column web page with search results in the middle and Google-style text ads related to your search terms in the right column. The left column contains a selection of related searches and a single-session search history to make it easier to backtrack to previous queries. However, the most interesting tool on the left is the search categories. Instead of a set of standard categories like "images," "video" etc, Kumo uses categories directly related to your search.

With the huge resources, both financial and human that the Redmond company has, and the support products and services that it has - stretched around the globe, Microsoft can easily take on Google and if not beat it, compete with it and equal it. So far, in providing a Search Engine, it has badly failed against both Google and Yahoo. What does Kumo have that isn't in Live and can Kumo do what Live failed to achieve? With Yahoo trying its best too, the next few months will be interesting.

25TH May, 2009: Kumo is now Bing

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