There’s some rumblings going around that Microsoft’s intending to re-brand its unpopular search engine as ‘Kumo’. There’s no question that Microsoft wants to claw back some of Google’s insane market share, but is this really the best way to do it?

‘Kumo’ means cloud, or spider, in Japanese. Both of those words have direct relevance to search engines. The rumours have come about because control of the Kumo.com domain has just passed to Microsoft, and the word was one of several (also including ‘Bing’ and ‘Hook’) that Microsoft was considering a few weeks back for a rebrand.

Microsoft needs to do something to reinvigorate its search offering, but I really can’t see someone picking to use “Kumo” over “Windows Live Search” simply because the former has a (questionably) better name.

Live Search (via LiveSide)

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