Microsoft's expected launch of a new search engine this week will be accompanied by a massive ad campaign and possibly a new brand name as well, according to AdAge. Known only as "Kumo" up until now, the revamped search service might launch as "Bing" - although Microsoft just lost an attempt to trademark the word, so who knows. The ad campaign will center on promoting the new brand and challenge users to think if search really does work as well as they thought.
Google has about 65% of the search market share and Yahoo about 20%, while Microsoft remains in the single digits. But the software giant believes there is a lot of room for improvement and in fact offers some internal data indicating 42 percent of all searches need to be refined after the first query.
They may be right, but even with a killer search platform and an advertising campaign said to cost upwards of $100 million, the Google brand has already become synonymous with Internet search; you can expect Microsoft to have a hard time changing that mindset.