If you haven't heard by now, Microsoft is renaming their search engine service to Kumo. Moving into the buzzword era of “Cloud Computing”, the word Kumo means “cloud” in Japanese. The giant who is infamous for codenaming projects, claims Kumo is a test program. Since http://kumo.com can not be accessed yet, nor can Microsoft confirm Kumo, I took the liberty to Whois the domain:
Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation
Domain Administrator
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
Email: domains@microsoft.com
DNS Servers:
ns1.msft.net
ns4.msft.net
ns5.msft.net
ns2.msft.net
ns3.msft.net
Based on Whois information, Kumo sits on the same domainname servers as live.com.
Since Microsoft failed to buy Yahoo, Kumo is meant to compete with Google head on. It claims its search results will include three pane results. Why panes, in a for instance, if the search was for a music artist, the panes would include categories such as lyrics, discography or biography. Still, the question remains, will MSN still be around.
When Live was launched, I figured it would replace MSN, yet, Internet browser IE will automatically homepage MSN in all versions to date, correction, I haven't seen IE 8. So how will Microsoft compete with Google and Yahoo when IE users, when searching, will use their homepage to search, and most cases MSN homepage? If Microsoft wants my 2 cents, I think IE 8 should tie in more with Kumo, or in the current case, Live.com, having the option to having the search service as it’s homepage and their search being the default search engine.
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