UPDATE: It’s confirmed. The new name will be Bing (http://bing.com). Rumors are spreading that they will launch it on May 29, 2009.
There are various reports in the Internet that says Microsoft is doing a rebrand of Live Search, their very own search engine. Live Search lost its luster in the search engine game, just as how Internet Explorer lost the consumer’s trust. Microsoft’s several failed attempts to buy Yahoo may have led them to do the rebrand.
Rumored potential names of the search engine reboot are Bing, Kumo and Hook. Both bing.com and kumo.com are already on the hands of Microsoft, while hook.com is still owned by another party.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share
The said rebrand will involve a $100-million ad campaign covering both traditional and new media (TV, radio, print media, Internet). Some speculated that the campaign would most likely attack Google, just like what they did to Apple barely two months ago (the Laptop Hunter ad).
$100 million proves that Microsoft is really serious in getting a big slice of the search engine market share. Google only spent $28 million in advertising last year. With the nature of computing and Internet industry where users choose a better product rather than what is “seen”, I believe the success of this rebrand depends on the quality of the service itself.
What do you think? Will it hit the mainstream or not?
Related Reads around the Internet
- Microsoft to Launch Ad Campaign to Attack Google by Advertising Age
- Is “Bing!” Microsoft Search’s New Brand by Business Insider
- Wait: Could ‘Bing’ be the new name for Microsoft’s Live Search? by All About Microsoft (ZDNet Blogs)
- Bing: Microsoft Launching New Rival to Google? by Mashable
- Bing.com WHOIS
- Kumo.com WHOIS
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I think Google will remain superior
Me too.
People would know that it’s still owned by an *evil* company who onced had a very crappy search engine.
I think they’re just wasting money — just like what they did on the Windows Vista campaign. They partnered with hardware manufacturers to put Windows Vista ready stickers on items BUT WINDOWS VISTA WAS A BIG FAILURE!
Definitely! And Vista is nothing but a crap OS compared to Linux.
Thanks for taking this opportunity to discuss this, I feel fervently about this and I like learning about this subject. If possible, as you gain information, please update this blog with more information. I have found it really useful.
great stuff. Do you have a RSS feed? And also would it be cool if I included your feed to a website of mine? I have a blog which brings content out of RSS feeds out of a couple of websites and I’d like to add yours, most people do not mind considering I link back and everything but I like to get consent 1st. Anyway let me know if you can, thank you.