Archive for the ‘Search News’ Category
Microsoft to rename search portal Kumo
It wasn’t long ago that some of us were doing searches in “MSN”, The Microsoft Network Search portal, but that brand that was originally Microsoft’s internet division seemed to be over-used, and sometimes confusing through various re-badged portals forged out of alliances between Microsoft and media outlets such as NBC (MSNBC), Channel Nine in Australia (ninemsn) and others, and so in 2007, Microsoft made a push for live.com to be it’s new flagship brand for search.
Microsoft’s Live brand seems to have outgrown search, and is labeled to a variety of it’s services, and the search for a new name may have been underway.
A recent article found on a blog site Microsoft has reported that the name Kumo has been suggested as the new name for Microsoft’s search portal.
There have already been issues with the naming rights for kumo.com, and the name had already been filed in the US Patent and Trademark office, so it may turn out that we’ll never put searches through Kumo.
One has to wonder how many more name changes Microsoft’s lesser used search portal will undergo before they settle on the one name permanently.
Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo! - again?
Talks re-emerged yesterday about a potential buy-out of Yahoo!’s Search business by Microsoft.
The London Sunday times reported that Microsoft was once again in talks to buy out the division of Yahoo! for $ US20 Billion, a much lower bid than previous bids of $47.5 Billion, which were withdrawn after Jerry Yang (then-CEO of Yahoo Inc) rejected the offer.
Representatives of both Microsoft and Yahoo! declined to comment, however a recent blog quoting high-ranking Yahoo executives suggest that the bid is just a rumour, and there are no discussions.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed there was no current discussions on the buy-out, but was still open to talks about buying the business out, and a large investor of Yahoo!, Carl Ichan who owns over 5% share of the company is pushing for the merger since Jerry Yang was removed from the Yahoo! executive team.
These are interesting times for Yahoo! and Microsoft, and there still remains a very real possibility that the two companies could merge in effort to build strength against the world’s leading search engine, Google.
What do you think? Leave feedback below.
Google’s Tenth Birthday Portal
Earlier this month we reported on Google’s tenth birthday and some of their acheivements.
Whilst the 10th Birthday (going by the date of the company being incorporated) took place some weeks ago, it seems the event may have been overshadowed by other significant events around the world including the Olympic Games, Anniversary of September 11 and more.
Google has today released a portal site for their 10th Anniversary at http://www.google.com.au/tenthbirthday/
The site highlights many of the milestones and achievements, and some of more light-hearted moments in the company’s history, such as it’s famous April Fool’s jokes.
Their is also a Blog by the Google team which theorises on what one might expect from the Search Giant in the next 10 years ahead.
This portal is definitely worth a read for any Google-follower.
GooglePhone dubbed “Android”
Earlier this week, we announced that Google had launched it’s own mobile platform.
The name of that phone platform has been dubbed “Android”. It is an open source operating system for mobile or cellular phones which Google is pushing for free onto mobile phone distributors to get penetration in the mobile market.
Some reports suggest that Android is ready to launch, and will be sold on HTC “Dream” phone handsets as early as September 23rd.
The phone is reported to be integrated with a host of products from the Google Suit including Google Maps, Google Docs and more.
It will be interesting to follow the trends of the Google Phone and it’s user’s search habits over the months to come.