While Microsoft was planning the announce their new search engine initiative at the upcoming D7 conference, it appears AdAge is breaking the news a little early.
In an article revealed a short time ago on the web (dated tomorrow ??), AdAge discusses an 80 million dollar advertising campaign to be orchestrated by JWT for Microsoft's new search engine ...... Bing.
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, among others, have had Bing on their list of potential names for Microsoft's upcoming new search product.
While screenshots of Kumo did leak in early March, Sullivan commented "I really doubt that will be the final name". (Numerous screen shots were inadvertently delivered to the web in early March branded Kumo).
Microsoft responded at that time.
In a Search Engine Land post on May 20, assuming this all pans out, Sullivan pretty much nailed it.
Microsoft has been seriously trailing market share leader Google (approx 62%) and Yahoo! (20%) with their MSN and Live.com products. Recently, it was revealed that Digg would be dropping their content network as well.
The question on everyone's mind is whether or not yet another identity will help Microsoft capture a reasonable share of the lucrative search market and, whether or not Kumo, (I mean Bing ?) .... will be better.
As for me .... I'm likin' Bing a lot more than Kumo :)
A little discussion is evolving on Friendfeed here.
Sidenote: The D7 conference will be held May 26 though May 28. The schedule can be found here.
Edited with additional references May 25 1 AM ET