Microsoft to rebrand, relaunch Live Search?

Posted by Al Warmington on Mon 24 Nov 2008

If in doubt, rebrand!

Over the weekend, the internet has been awash with reports that Microsoft is about to make a fresh push to make its internet search engine relevant. The word is that it’s thinking of going for a rebrand to improve its prospects. A new site could launch early next year.

Despite controlling 71% of the browser market and 90% of the operating systems market, it’s Google and Yahoo (though mostly Google) that are dominating the search engine wars. The breakdown in the Yahoo takeover negotiations earlier in the year may have lost Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang the CEO position and upset a lot of shareholders, but it has also left Microsoft sitting with the same weak search business.

Rebranding Live Search might seem a bit extreme, but Microsoft has a habit of changing names when times get tough. Take the sudden leap from MSN to Live Search for example. Or that the new Windows operating system has gone for a old-school numerical name, Windows 7, presumably to minimise any association with every computer user’s favourite punching bag, Vista.

One website has found evidence to suggest that Microsoft might have already decided on a new name for the search – Kumo. The Redmond Giant has apparently just taken control of the Kumo.com domain and is now pointing it towards an internal test site.

Kumo means “Cloud” or “Spider” in Japanese. That has connotations of cloud computing – a popular concept right now. Spider also goes well with ‘web’ topics. You can sort of see what it might be thinking.

The glaring problem is that Kumo is rubbish name. We can’t imagine anyone saying “hang on, let me Kumo that for you”. Furthermore, Live Search is already part of a wider catalogue of products – Live Messenger, Live Mail, Live Maps, etc. Even if people are only using it to search for ‘Google’, at least it’s right there alongside many of our other Microsoft services.

We’d be extremely surprised if Microsoft does choose to abandon the Live Search brand at its relatively young age. Especially for the name ‘Kumo’. Clearly though, Microsoft is considering relaunching as a way out of its rut, but it’s still going to need to try come up with something spectacular if its search engine is ever going to stop playing second fiddle to Google.

Live Search (via Silicon Alley Insider)