LiveSide - News blog : kumo

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag, It’s…Bing!

Sunshine — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:26:00 GMT

Steve Ballmer just announced Microsoft’s newest search offering on the D7 stage. He introduced it by showing a video, a Star Trek parody called “A bold search for a new name.” The video runs over Microsoft’s chronic re-naming of its search engine. And there it is: the new name is “Bing.”

D7 Video: Microsoft's Ballmer and Walt Mossberg

Why Bing? Obviously we needed a better name, says Ballmer. “We needed a name that says this is all about search.” Ballmer doesn’t seem to really know. “I’m not the creative guy, here …. short mattered … people like to ‘verb up’ … works globally, doesn’t have negative connotations.”

There were some trademark challenges, as we here at LiveSide reported too. Bing Crosby, apparently was not an issue. Those challenges were overcome, so here it is: BING!

Microsoft designed Bing as a “Decision Engine” to provide customers with intelligent search tools to help them simplify tasks and make more informed decisions, from simple decisions like choosing the fastest route to get home to more complex ones like researching a product purchase or planning a trip (Maps, Cashback, Encarta, Farecast). Bing also includes the technology Microsoft acquired when it purchased Powerset, as planned.

Bing will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.

The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:
- Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.
- Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel.
- Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

The D7 Interview with Steve Ballmer ~~is still going on~~ is now fully available. ~~We’ll have the video up on here as soon as we can~~. Video is up now too, unfortunately the Star Trek parody isn’t in it :(

You can also find out more about Bing at DiscoverBing.com/behindbing.

PressPass - Microsoft’s New Search at Bing.com Helps People Make Better Decisions
Previous articles about Kumo/Bing

Some more on Bing.com – that confusing trademark will soon become Blinko

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:33:58 GMT

Microsoft acquired Bing.com in March, and has a network all set up:

but as we reported last week, there’s that pesky little US Patent and Trademark Office to get around. The problem is with Bing Mobile, which is just too confusing for the USPTO. But apparently that will soon be cleared up, too, as evidenced by a note on the Bing mobile site:

And the ever-watchful MG Siegler over at TechCrunch may have even spotted the logo in a favicon:

While we freely admit we have grown to like Kumo, the evidence for Bing keeps mounting, and people even seem to like it, according to a poll Emil Protalinski is running over at Ars Technica. Who knew?

Setting the (search) stage this week: New name, new version, new partnership?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:07:00 GMT

This is a big week or so for Microsoft, and for Live Search. According to reports from the Wall St. Journal, the widely anticipated new version of Live Search, code named Kumo, is set to be unveiled at D: The All Things Digital conference in Carslbad, California. And shortly after that, Dr. Qi Lu, Microsoft’s President of the Online Services Division (which includes Live Search), is slated to keynote at SMX Advanced. According to a countdown clock spotted by an alert Neowin reader while on Microsoft’s campus which lines up with the timing of the keynote, we’ve speculated that Kumo may be available for the first time in its entirety at that time.

Of course speculation has been rampant about what the new name for Live Search will be. As early as last May, then Platform and Services Division President Kevin Johnson (who has left the company after it failed to acquire Yahoo! in a highly publicized attempt last year), approached the idea of a rebranding effort. Mary Jo Foley, of course, came up with the goods early on, calling out Bing, or Hook, or Kumo as possible new names. We followed the trail, and Kumo emerged as the code name of choice, with a rollout internally across the company.

But we’d been hearing rumblings for some time that Kumo would not be the final name, and now there’s rampant speculation that Bing will win out. Truthfully, we can’t wait to get past the speculation and get on with the $100 million worth of advertising that’s coming to promote the new brand, whatever it is.

And in what would surely be a topper for a momentous week for Live Search, Andrea James at the Seattle PI is reporting that there’s a possibility that a new Microsoft partnership is in the works (can you say Yahoo!?). Apparently aside from raising some $3.75 billion in cash, Microsoft has applied for an LLC, which can be a pre-cursor to announcing a partnership:

"A new search engine, a new ad campaign, and perhaps, a new online partnership could make this a week to remember for Microsoft shareholders," Jefferies analyst Katherine Egbert wrote Tuesday in a research note.

…

This latest report by Egbert suggests that Microsoft could be announcing more than a new search engine:

It's also possible that Microsoft could debut a partnership or make an acquisition of some type that will bolster its online search presence. The software giant registered an LLC Corp. in Delaware last week, a move often made in advance of acquisitions or joint ventures. The registration gave rise to widespread speculation that Microsoft would
acquire Citrix since the name of the LLC is somewhat similar to Microsoft's code name for Citrix.

While that's possible, the timing of the registration and recent debt raise indicate that it might be more likely Microsoft uses the LLC to form a partnership that will boost the amount of traffic flowing through its search engine, perhaps through a partnership with Yahoo! or others. It would make sense that Microsoft would want to address both the passive and active search markets simultaneously, to maximize the potential return on their $80-100mm investment. Passive searches are performed via search toolbars embedded on popular sites, such as Yahoo's homepage or MSN, while active searches come via a user typing the search provider's URL into a browser e.g. google.com.

The recent debt raise that Egbert refers to is Microsoft's $3.75 billion bond issue made earlier this month.

We’ll be watching D: as closely as we can, and will be at SMX Advanced next week. Looks like we’ll finally be able to get a look at, and our hands on, Live Search v.Next. And a search deal too? Can’t wait!

US Trademark Office rejects Bing - “likelihood of confusion”

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:18:00 GMT

In a document filed this morning and mailed to Microsoft, the US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Microsoft’s filing of “Bing” as a trademark name for “computer search engine software; graphical user interface software, namely, toolbar software for use with search engine software and websites”. A similar mark, registered to Bing Mobile Inc. is too similar, according to the posting:

Registration of the applied-for mark is refused because of a likelihood of confusion with the mark in U.S. Registration No. 3562956. Trademark Act Section 2(d), 15 U.S.C. §1052(d); see TMEP §§1207.01 et seq. See the enclosed registration.

…

The registered mark is BING MOBILE INC. in International Class 009 for “mobile phone software for a social networking service.”

…

The marks are similar in appearance, sound, connotation and commercial impression. The marks are highly similar in that they both contain the element BING. Applicant has merely deleted wording from registrant’s mark. The mere deletion of wording from a registered mark may not be sufficient to overcome a likelihood of confusion. See In re Optical Int’l, 196 USPQ 775, 778 (TTAB 1977); TMEP §1207.01(b)(ii)-(b)(iii). Applicant’s mark does not create a distinct commercial impression because it contains the same common wording as registrant’s mark, and there is no other wording to distinguish it from registrant’s mark.

…

Regarding the issue of likelihood of confusion, the question is not whether people will confuse the marks, but whether the marks will confuse people into believing that the goods and/or services they identify come from the same source. In re West Point-Pepperell, Inc., 468 F.2d 200, 201, 175 USPQ 558, 558-59 (C.C.P.A. 1972); TMEP §1207.01(b). For that reason, the test of likelihood of confusion is not whether the marks can be distinguished when subjected to a side-by-side comparison. The question is whether the marks create the same overall impression.

Bing is one of the names rumored to be possible rebranded names for Microsoft’s Live Search. Microsoft filed a trademark application for the mark on March 9th of this year, and also has a trademark application for the same computer search engine classification for Kumo. That application is still in process.

Whether the rejection means much in the overall plan remains to be seen, but this filing apparently can put to rest speculation that Bing will be the new name for Live Search.

Of course, we’re not lawyers or trademark experts, but the wording seems pretty clear in this filing, that Bing has been rejected.

Edit: Of course if MSFT wanted to use Bing, they could probably easily just buy the company or the name, so really probably nothing has been put to rest. And of course they could have a whole other name planned, too.

Microsoft to show “Kumo” next week?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:27:47 GMT

The Wall St. Journal is reporting today that Microsoft is expected to show for the first time publically its new search effort, code named Kumo, at “D: All Things Digital”. The technology conference, hosted by All Things D bloggers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, is being held May 26 – 28 in Carlsbad, California, and features a number of big names in tech, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz, Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and many others.

(screenshot via Neowin)

Kumo-like features, including “Best match”, a new look home page, Farecast integration, and more have been spotted in the wild recently. Neowin writer Ryan Rea (and yes he jumped ship after a short but sweet stint here at LiveSide, we wish him well) has screenshots. Similar to when Kumo (the code name for the new search, there are lots of rumors bubbling that the final product will carry a new “top secret” name) was first rolled out internally in March, these new features seem to need external testing just when it’s time to generate some buzz.

While Microsoft indeed may show Kumo at All Things D (and the report does go on to say “A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment”), we still think it’s a fair bet that Live Search v.Next is still targeting an early June launch, to coincide with Qi Lu’s keynote at SMX Advanced, and hitting the countdown clock. Seeing it next week will be one thing, but we won’t really know how it performs until we can get our hands on it.

On the eve of Kumo, is Live Search better than you think?

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:53:00 GMT

Kumo, the for now name of a newly rebranded Microsoft Live Search, should be upon us soon. Kumo has been in corporate wide internal testing at Microsoft since early March (oops added the time frame), and at least parts of what appears to be a new UI have been resurfacing. We don’t have the home page changes here, but in searching for some news on Sunday night’s LA earthquake, we did run across one of the purported new features of “Kumo”, called “Best match”:

Note the smaller search box contained within the best match, for searching within the best match web page. Vanessa Fox had spotted Best match back in March, but there was no “search within” box back then.

So we wouldn’t be surprised to see more hints at what’s to come in the next few days and weeks, as the countdown clock ticks on. In the meantime, however, while Live Search US market share continues to remain flat (at somewhere between 6% and 10%, depending on the reporting service), certain aspects of Live Search, in particular cashback, seem to be making an impact.

In a blog post on May 15, Nielsen Online looked at year-over-year growth for product search, and Live Search Product Search and cashback featured strongly:

And so Live Search Cashback was born. With technology derived through Microsoft’s acquisition of Jellyfish.com, the Cashback program immediately took off, driving 140 percent increase in traffic to MSN/Windows Live Shopping Search from the previous month. As many wondered if the novelty would quickly wear off, the Live Shopping Search audience grew 615 percent over the year. Even more impressive: it was one of only two Top Ten Shopping Search Providers to grow their audience from April 2008 to April 2009.

The Nielsen post goes on to say that shopping search is a small part of overall search share, noting that “searches conducted on shopping-specific engines only comprise between one and two percent of total search activity”. However, as Jellyfish.com founder Mark McGuire says in a blog post reacting to the Nielsen post:

Use cashback when you want to buy something and Microsoft shares advertising revenue back with you. The end result of this is that more folks use Live search for commercial queries, leaving Google with non-commercial search traffic (e.g., when I need to find the address of my local public library I go to Google, when I’ve got my credit card in hand, I search at Live cashback). The data published by Nielsen backs this up, showing that Live Search is the most efficient engine at generating sales for its advertisers. This is small now, but think about what happens if Microsoft can continue to siphon off commercial queries, and the big amount of ad dollars chasing those queries.

Just what is Kumo, anyway? (And is it open source?)

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:10:00 GMT

Some 90,000 Microsoft employees are currently testing a new version of Live Search under the name Kumo (well, some of them are testing it, the other half are using Google, apparently). Expected to be released (or at least announced) in early June, Kumo, or whatever it ends up being called, seems to be taking on a life of its own as Microsoft stays mum and Twitter and the blogs have a field day.

(Note that the Kumo name may not be final, from what we hear, and that the final product may still indeed be called Bing or Sift or something else entirely. We’ll call it Kumo for now, and wait to see if the name sticks).

Is Kumo just a rebranding effort, a bold foray into the semantic web, or just a rebate program for eBay? Lots of speculation but not much in the way of facts out there, so just what is Kumo, anyway? Let’s take a look at what to expect:

Rebranding

First and foremost, Kumo is a rebranding effort. For whatever reasons, the Live Search brand has fallen out of favor at Microsoft. And good thing too, with the rise recently of real time searches like Twitter Search and many others which are being called, well, “live search”. We wrote a few months ago about our feeling that a strongly Microsoft branded search product might not fly in a Yahoo! partnership, and that may be part of the thinking. In any event, Microsoft is committed to a new brand for Live Search, with a new $100 million dollar ad campaign to follow.

Live Search moved some time ago out of Windows Live (it’s in the Online Serves Division now, under Qi Lu and along with MSN and Microsoft Advertising), and a rebrand may do as much to strengthen the Windows Live brand moving forward as it will to establish a new identity for “the thing formerly known as Live Search”.

Ten Blue Lines

The mantra around search at Microsoft is that there is still lots left to be done, that the “ten blue lines” presented by Google in search results just isn’t enough. When Microsoft made the switch internally from Live Search to Kumo in early March, some screenshots appeared at some of the big tech news orgs showing a new search results page:

We’re hearing that the page has evolved quite a bit from the look you see here, but the idea is a better presentation of search results on the page, to make search more useful and attractive, and to differentiate from those “ten blue lines”.

Powerset

Microsoft acquired San Francisco based Powerset last July, promising at that time that it would help to bring search “to the next level”. Semantic search, or attempting to understand the intent of the search phrase and not just looking up keywords, might just be the next big thing. The Powerset blog is beginning a series of podcasts on semantic search. The first one, published today, takes a high level look at semantic search:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

It isn’t yet clear how much of Powerset is in Kumo (our guess is not much), but as Powerset had only indexed Wikipedia (a fine proof of concept, but of limited usefulness), it is not much more than wishful thinking to say that Kumo=Powerset, at least at this point. Kumo at its core is still Live Search by another name, not a whole new search offering.

Open Source

Much has been made recently about some comments by members of the Powerset team about their use of open source software, specifically Hadoop. From that, blogs and tweets have had fun connecting dots: “Kumo includes Powerset and Powerset=Open Source, so Kumo=Open Source, Wheeee!”

Just a quick primer: there is a specialized area of database development where extremely large data sets (for example search indexes) are involved. These specialized efforts consist of two main parts, a file storage system, and a programming model to query the stored information. Google has its own system, with the Google File System and Bigtable as the storage part, and MapReduce, using C++ and Sawzall as an execution environment. Yahoo! developed its own (open source) system, using Hadoop, and Pig (or Pig Latin).

Microsoft has its own system, too. Cosmos is built to run on Microsoft servers, and SCOPE is a SQL based scripting language to query against it. Cosmos is in general use internally, is used by Live Search and Windows Live, and according to a white paper published last summer, has significant advantages over the Google or Yahoo! offerings:

Both Google and Yahoo! use a MapReduce execution environment. MapReduce is very rigid, forcing every computation to be structured as a sequence of map-reduce pairs. The Cosmos execution environment is significantly more flexible, handling execution of any computation that can be expressed as an acyclic dataflow graph.

Microsoft may find itself engulfed in Hadoop if a search deal with Yahoo! does come about, and in some ways Powerset may actually help ease a transition. However again, as far as we are aware, Microsoft is not ditching its own system for Hadoop, certainly not for the launch of Kumo.

Search games

Live Search Club, the recently retired Live Search Perks, and Live Search cashback have all been attempts to push people towards Live Search, and to capture the most lucrative searchers (the ones looking to buy something), in the process. While these programs have met with limited success, there have been hints of more to come. This may be an area where some of that $100 million ad money might be well spent.

We’ll soon find out

If the countdown clock is correct, we should know a lot more about Kumo, or Live Search v.Next, soon. We'll be right here to bring you all the latest.

Live Search PR push in anticipation of “Kumo”

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:22:07 GMT

We reported last week on a countdown clock that a Neowin member spotted while at Microsoft, and yesterday Live Search Tech Evangelist Nathan Buggia tweeted that the internal Kumo trial will soon come to an end:

In preparation for what we think will be the launch of “Kumo” (and still nothing final about the name), Live Search is beginning to roll out the PR. A few days ago Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post tweeted about an upcoming call with Yusuf Mehdi:

Last night, Microsoft hosted an event at Powerset in San Francisco to talk to journalists about Live Search. Louis Gray was there, and reported “a conveyed perception that traditional reviews of search engines are flawed in their simplicity, in their context, and are not in depth enough to gain a clear knowledge of what's complex subject matter”. As outlined in Powerset Senior Program Manager Mark Johnson’s blog post “How Not to Rate a Search Engine”, the message was that trying a search engine for 3 results were not enough, that users should try Live Search for a week. Even with that, can Microsoft gain ground on Google? Of course that was a topic of conversation at the meetup:

At the quick meetup, questions around Microsoft's potential to dethrone Google were plentiful. We talked about how the once-mighty Alta Vista had once had a significant lead, and even after Google's debut, it held a corner in image search and language translation, before those too were eroded. Could Microsoft find a position that Google just doesn't do well? Could Microsoft start to be good enough such that if people tried to use Live Search for a full week, that Google would seem 'less good'? I even overheard a comment at the event that said in user groups, those surveyed preferred results that displayed a Google logo, even if the results shown were from Live Search.

And tonite, Live Search is hosting an event they’re calling the “Jane & Robot Meetup”:

Are you going to be in the Bay area tomorrow? Do you have a vested interest in search marketing? Know any web developers? Well then, make sure drop in to the Microsoft technology center in Mountain View, CA for a hearty discussion of search marketing hosted Microsoft, with guest speakers: Vanessa Fox, famed creator of Google’s Webmaster Tools, and Sean Suchter, previous VP of Yahoo.

We expect to be hearing quite a bit more about Live Search in the coming days and weeks (even perhaps news on a Yahoo! deal), and even though we’re not in the valley we’ll be at SMX Advanced here in Seattle to keep you posted.

Countdown to Kumo? Neowin reader spots 40 day clock

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:31:00 GMT

A post on a Neowin forum crossed our path this weekend (thanks for the tip, CalumJR!): apparently the poster was hanging out at Bldg 88 (which does house parts of Live Search), and spotted a “Countdown to Kumo” clock on a TV there.

I'm just sitting in MS now and there is a TV with a preview of kumo, the countdown says 40days 18 hours. If this intrests anyone.

The post is time-stamped April 23 22:05, so if our math is right (and when has our math EVER been right?), that puts the Zero Hour at or around 4pm Tuesday June 2nd.

What makes that date particularly interesting, of course, is that its the night before Qi Lu’s first keynote, at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Dr. Lu, Microsoft Online Services Division President, who spent 10 years at Yahoo! before coming to Microsoft on January 5th, will make his first public appearance in a keynote at 9am pdt on Wednesday June 3rd. We’ll be there, of course, and we’ll have more on Search and SMX Advanced soon, stay tuned.

Just for fun we created our own countdown clock, in the right hand sidebar. Anyone wandering by Bldg 88 who wants to check our clock settings is welcome to send us a tip!

Sifting through Trademark applications: Kumo, or Sift, or who knows what?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:39:00 GMT

All this business about what the new name for Live Search might be has a lot of blog writers and journalists turning over all kinds of rocks, including lots of fun with TESS, the US Patent and Trademark Office’s online trademark search feature. We’ve posted before on our diggings through TESS regarding Kumo, and indeed there’s been some slight movement in that department: the USPTO has sent a letter to Microsoft (on April 16), asking for a narrower definition of what Kumo would be used for, and noting that Microsoft might need to cough up some more cash:

The wording in the identification of services needs clarification because it is too broad and could include services classified in other international classes.

…

Therefore, applicant must either (1) restrict the application to the number of classes covered by the fee(s) already paid, or (2) submit the fees for the additional class(es).

The filing fee for adding classes to an application is as follows:

$325 per class, when the fees are submitted with a response filed online via the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) …or

$375 per class, when the fees are submitted with a paper response.

Yikes, in this tough economy, will Microsoft be able to afford another $325?

Then in an article posted today, our friend Joe Tartakoff of PaidContent.orgspotted the names Sift and Swivel. We’re not sure about Swivel (an application for “operating system software for mobile phones”) but from our eager perusal of the Sift application, it appears to our non-lawyer trained eyes that the application was rejected, although not finally. In a document from the USPTO sent March 30, 2009:

Registration is refused because the applied-for mark merely describes the function of applicant’s goods and/or services. Trademark Act Section 2(e)(1), 15 U.S.C. §1052(e)(1); see TMEP §§1209.01(b), 1209.03 et seq.

A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose or use of the specified goods and/or services.

Applicant is applying for the mark “SIFT” for “computer programs for searching email, text messages, address and contact information,” in relevant part. The definition of “sift” is “to go through especially to sort out what is useful or valuable <sifted the evidence> —often used with through<sift through a pile of old letters>.” The attached excerpts from the Lexis/Nexis® database evidence that software may feature a sifting function. The applicant’s software is for sifting through email, text messages, and contact information. Thus, “SIFT” is descriptive of applicant’s goods in accordance with Section 2(e)(1) of the Act.

Although the examining attorney has refused registration, the applicant may respond to the refusal to register by submitting evidence and arguments in support of registration.

This is fun stuff, wheee!

None of these actions are final, and none of them tell us a dang thing, truthfully, as to what Microsoft’s intentions really are. We have a feeling that a Yahoo Search deal may have something to do with naming and branding, and who knows, we may see “Yahoo Search by Microsoft” as a new brand when it is all said and done, but for now, we’ll keep digging just like everyone else.

How many Softies use Live Search?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:20:28 GMT

In a blog post today, Ina Fried at CNET News quoted a Microsoft employee who recalled hearing some sobering statistics about Google vs. Live Search usage within Microsoft:

At a company meeting about a year ago, one Microsoft worker recalls hearing that four-fifths of the company's search traffic was going to Google. Although he uses Live Search personally, the worker, who asked not to be named, said plenty of his co-workers still use Google.

"We are still fighting that battle," the worker said. Among its full-time U.S. workers, Microsoft says that, for February, Live Search and Google had roughly equal share, at around 48 percent apiece, with little search traffic going to Yahoo or any of the other search players.

While there’s no doubt that Live Search faces quite an uphill battle both internally and externally, the stats aren’t quite so grim, according to a tweet by Live Search Community Program Manager Betsy Aoki:

Numbers, of course, are funny things, easily manipulated, especially in 140 characters or less (we’ve asked – via Twitter – for a source for the data). It would be interesting to see how much Live Search traffic internally came as a result of the Kumo testing, what the January (and March) numbers were, etc. etc, but even if Kumo has doubled internal usage of Live Search, that’s not so bad, hey?

Microsoft readies $80-$100 Million ad campaign for new search brand

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:46:53 GMT

via Todd Bishop at TechFlash

Microsoft has selected ad agency JWT to run the campaign, according to a news posting in Advertising Age:

Industry executives expect JWT, part of WPP, to unveil an estimated $80 million to $100 million push for the new search engine in June, with online, TV, print and radio executions. Microsoft spent $361 million on U.S. measured media in 2008, the bulk of it devoted to brand advertising and smaller chunks to other Microsoft brands such as Xbox and MSN, according to TNS Media Intelligence data.

According to the post, whether the new brand for Live Search is Kumo, or some other name, it will be positioned as a “reimagined” search engine:

According to one person close the situation, the forthcoming campaign will be careful to not position "Kumo" as a competitor to Yahoo or Google and instead cast it as a reimagined search engine that ups the game by yielding fewer but more-focused results. The proposed strategy is probably a good -- if not the only -- way to go.

However Ad Age doesn’t seem overly impressed that the campaign will make much of a difference:

Heavy marketing hasn't exactly been a winning formula for other search engines. IAC-owned Ask.com, for example, asked Crispin for a major ad campaign that launched in May 2007 and focused on Ask.com's algorithm. But Ask.com's share declined two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.5% from July 2007 to July 2008, according to ComScore.

Dr. Qi Lu, who spoke today to a group of Microsoft worldwide field leaders is planning his first public appearance in June at SMX Advanced, which fits nicely into the timing of the ad campaign.

The curious case of Kumo: more than just a “test name”?

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:50:28 GMT

We first heard the term last summer. Mary Jo Foley posted on some possible new names for Live Search, including Kumo, which has led us on quite a little goose chase over the past months, one that doesn’t appear to be quite over yet.

Yesterday we posted on a “tweet” from the Live Search team:

In case you're wondering, Kumo is only the test name for our forthcoming update. We think you're going to like it.

..and got a couple of comments and saw quite a few more tweets and posts on how Kumo “was just a test name”. But our digging last summer and fall showed that Microsoft had not only registered multiple Kumo domain names (kumo.com, kumo.it, kumo.co.uk, kumo.se), but had applied for a trademark on the name.

Now anyone with 8 bucks can register a domain name (although if Kumo was only going to be an internal code name, why bother?). However the trademark is a little bit of a different story. Without getting into all the details (although they’re laid out in the trademark application files), there are 3 active trademark applications for Kumo: Microsoft’s, a guy from Venezuela (who filed 2 days after Mary Jo’s story came out, and seems to have quite a history of domain squatting, but that’s a different story), and a digital video camera maker.

Discounting the Venezuelan for the sake of the story, it seems as the USPTO came back to Microsoft in February, saying that it looked to them like the camera maker beat them by 6 days (Dec. 2 vs Dec. 8). However Microsoft apparently had a filing in South Africa on June 18th of last year that they’re pulling out of their back pocket, and saying:

As to the potential citation of application Serial No. 77542283 filed August 8, 2008, Applicant notes that the effective date of the present application is its convention priority date of June 18, 2008. Thus, Applicant's application is prior to the potential citation and Applicant's application should be cited against Serial No. 77542283, not vice versa.

That happened on March 4th. OK still, kind of fun in a geeky sort of way, but what really stood out was this little bit among some clarification requested by the trademark officer, specifically Section 1(b):

Applicant intends to rely solely on its intent to use basis under Section 1(b), while retaining its Section 44(d) priority date. (...)

Filing Basis: Section 1(b), Intent to Use: The applicant has a bona fide intention to use or use through the applicant's related company or licensee the mark in commerce on or in connection with the identified goods and/or services as of the filing date of the application. (15 U.S.C. Section 1051(b)).

So in this filing, dated March 9, 2009, Microsoft has stated a “bona fide intention to use...the mark in commerce”. Now (do we really even need to tell you this?) we’re not lawyers, but that sounds to us like a lot more than Kumo being a “test name”.

Does this prove that Kumo will be the new brand name for Search? Of course not. Did the trademark messiness get Microsoft to back off the Kumo name? Who knows? (not us). All it seems to show is that at one time, and as recently as 9 days ago, Kumo seems to have been a lot more than just a “test name”. That, and reading trademark applications can be fun! Who knew?

Kumo home page

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:18:00 GMT

We’ve seen a number of screen shots of Kumo.com, but this is the first one we’ve seen of the home page:

Note the pager at the bottom right.

We like this idea of deploying Kumo internally, so that MS employees who apparently don’t read LiveSide, and “didn’t get the memo” tantalize us with their tweets (where we found the screenshot). Here’s a selection (names and links removed to protect the innocent):

What's kumo? http://www.kumo.com/ Why doesn't it work at all using Safari? Did I miss the memo about Live Search be renamed?

kumo.com rocks

did I miss a memo? since when http://search.live.com is redirected to www.kumo.com

I'm kinda digging how Kumo.com keeps my search history on the left side there. Pretty cool.

Never mind. Live.com only redirects to kumo.com if you're signed into the Microsoft Corporate network... Sorry...

But like our friend Kris Hoet said in Twitter, “kinda funny to see people make up their mind about Kumo based on 1 or 2 screenshots, seriously”. Couldn’t agree more, Kris, we sure want to get our hands on more than just screenshots!

(BTW we’ve been collecting some of our favorite tweets and running them in our sidebar. If you normally read LiveSide in a feed reader, you’re missing them they’re fun! Luckily, you can subscribe to the feed of our favorite tweets in their own feed: we try to keep them clean (not always easy to do!))

Microsoft would still “like to sit down” with Yahoo! on search deal

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:08:00 GMT

The Times Online reports today in an interview with Microsoft COO Kevin Turner that the door is still open to a search deal with Yahoo!:

In an interview with The Times, Kevin Turner, chief operating officer of Microsoft, extended an olive branch to Carol Bartz, the new chief executive of Yahoo!, making it clear that a smaller deal regarding a partnership on search functions was still part of Microsoft’s thinking.

“They have a new CEO, and she’s formulating her business plans,” Mr Turner said.

“We’ve certainly made her aware and the Yahoo! board aware that if they are ever interested in an opportunity to partner with them on search, we’d like to sit down and at least have the conversation. It has to make economic sense to both parties.”

Microsoft has repeatedly said that a deal to buy Yahoo! is off the table. It remains interested in a search deal, and there are at least some indications that Yahoo! may remain interested as well. Bartz may be willing to talk, although privately, according to remarks she made at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in early March:

"I said this to Mr. Ballmer, I will not negotiate with you and 30,000 of my closest friends. I will negotiate privately," said Bartz, adding to investors, "If something happens, you will know about it then."

Last week Yahoo! reverted on some changes it had made to its employee severance plan in the heat of last year’s takeover attempt by Microsoft, and settled a lawsuit brought by Yahoo! investors over the severance plan. Lawyer for the Yahoo! investors Joel Friedlander thinks the settlement could help a Microsoft – Yahoo! search deal:

Friedlander also noted that Microsoft officials saw Yahoo’s revised severance plan as creating “bad retention,” according to court papers unsealed in the case.

“The plan was an attempt to gum up an acquisition by Microsoft,” he said. The accord “makes a search-engine deal more likely.”

Microsoft continues to invest heavily in search, and appears to be readying a new look and a new brand for Live Search, “code-named” (read: float it out there and gauge the reaction) Kumo.com. However it continues to lag far behind in search market share. A deal with Yahoo! would help Microsoft gain share and credibility as it attempts to build a search and advertising base in order to fund search, and web ventures such as Windows Live, Outlook Live, Office Live, and web based versions of Office 14.