Microsoft testing new search service
Microsoft has begun internal testing of a new search service titled Kumo. The news confirms expectations that Kumo will be a replacement for the Live.com search rather than a simple rebranding.
An internal memo tells staff that whenever they search through Live.com, their query will now be rerouted through the Kumo system. (It would be interesting to know how many Microsoft staff simply stick to Google.) The system isn’t yet available to people outside of Microsoft’s network.
A screenshot leaked to CNET shows the main change is a toolbar making it easy to refine results into particular categories. The demonstration shows a search for musician Taylor Swift producing categories such as songs, lyrics and biographies. This suggests the categories thrown up by a particular set of results will be tailored to the type of subject searched for.
It had been known for some time that Microsoft had bought the domain name kumo.com but it’s intended purpose had not been confirmed until this week. Part of the uncertainty lay in the fact that kumo is a Japanese term with two possible meanings depending on pronunciation. One, ’spider’, fits in logically with the idea of a search engine but the other, ‘cloud’, threw some sources off the sent with the idea that it might be used for online services known as cloud computing.
At the moment Microsoft is simply telling staff that kumo is a codename for the test process and there’s no guarantee it will be the final name for the service.
The memo also reveals some intriguing statistics about searches, though there’s no source cited and it’s not clear if the figures relate to all search engines or Live.com alone. It’s claimed that 40 percent of searches go unanswered, while 46 percent of search sessions last more than 20 minutes. Given that many successful search sessions only take a few seconds, this seems a very high proportion.
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March 5th, 2009
“The memo also reveals some intriguing statistics about searches, though there’s no source cited and it’s not clear if the figures relate to all search engines or Live.com alone. It’s claimed that 40% of searches go unanswered, while 46% of search sessions last more than 20 minutes.”
Who else but Microsoft could come up with a search engine that runs as poorly as that?