It has been reported this week that Microsoft is to demonstrate it’s new ‘Kumo’ service at D: All Things Digital conference next week.
Despite Google’s obvious dominance in the search market, Microsoft is refusing to be defeatist and is continuing to challenge Google’s position with the launch of its new and improved search engine.
Even though the demonstration of the new product is to take place at the D: All Things Digital conference, the actual launch of the product is scheduled to take place at the SMX Advanced conference during the first week of June.
However the name of the search engine has not yet been confirmed and it appears that there are four contenders for the all important brand name:
- Kumo
- Bing
- Hook
- Sift
As a result of the previous testing that has occurred on the new search engine, under the name ‘Kumo’, it would appear that this is unlikely to be the name of choice due to the ridiculing and mocking that the name received.
Similarly, the fact that Sift.com and Hook.com are already registered to other parties suggests that ‘Sift’ and ‘Hook’ are also unlikely to be chosen, making ‘Bing’ the obvious choice.
Bing.com actually returns a blank page and the domain name is registered to Microsoft, so it seems this likely to be the front runner.
However Microsoft may turn around and surprise us all and go with the already strong brand name that is MSN.
The big question is, will these efforts and a marketing budget of $100 million help Microsoft to challenge Google’s position and help them to gain share of a market where Google is so predominately King.
Most people would predict that the incremental improvements that Microsoft propose to implement to their search engine are unlikely to dent Google’s position and just adding a few new features and a new look is unlikely to make a great deal of difference to their share in the market.
Also with Microsoft hyping up the launch as their chance to ‘beat’ Google, we can only feel that there will be great disappointment if, or more likely when, they fail to do so.
Microsoft need to concentrate their efforts on the increasing market share by smaller increments and be proud of those achievements, rather than solely focusing their efforts on ‘beating’ Google, as they can only expect to be disappointed.
Microsoft have shown that they can change consumers opinion with it’s Laptop Hunters advertising campaign, but do they really have the ability to reinvent themselves in a market where there is already such a dominant leader such as Google?
We’ll just have to wait and see, but don’t hold your breath…
