When’s Microsoft’s new search brand launching? Perhaps at our SMX Advanced search marketing conference on June 2, based on a “countdown clock” someone spotted at the Microsoft campus.
The LiveSide Blog reports a visitor noticed a countdown clock at Building 88, where the Live Search team works at Microsoft’s headquarters. The clock says “Countdown to Kumo,” with the timer ending at 4pm on Tuesday, June 2nd. That coincides with the SMX Advanced show in Seattle, which runs June 2 to 3. Also, Microsoft’s Dr. Qi Lu — who heads the company’s search efforts — will be keynoting at the show.
Kumo is rumored to be a possible new brand for Microsoft’s search product. Internally, Microsoft employees are testing a new version of Microsoft’s search product that uses that name. It’s widely expected that the brand name will change and that this will coincide with the new features being released to the public. However, officially Microsoft has only said that it will “clarify” its search brand but given no set date as to when that will happen or when some of the changes being tested will be seen.
There also remains questions on whether the new search brand will be called Kumo, in the end. Hints have been dropped that Microsoft is also considering Bing and Hook as well as Sift.
It makes sense to me that they would launch the new search brand at SMX Advanced. There is more discussion on this topic at Techmeme.
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If Microsoft does choose to launch their new search product at SMX Advanced, I wonder if this is a new beginning for them with respect to participating with the greater search community.
I’m thinking at the moment about the talk/presentation that Danny did not so long ago when he was highly critical at their lack of effort to participate – even when the community was reaching out to them with open arms.