Both the Wall Street Journal and its technology subsidiary All Things Digital are reporting that Microsoft will demo its new Kumo search engine next week.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is on the list of speakers for the D: All Things Digital conference to be held May 26-28 in Carlsbad, California.
"People familiar with the matter" told the Journal that Microsoft would take the opportunity to show off the new search engine for the first time.
Some observers question whether Kumo will actually be the final name for the product.
Other rumored names have been Bing, Hook, and Sift. But bloggers have noted that Bing.com is registered to Microsoft, uses Microsoft's name servers, and currently resolves to a blank page, so the conventional guessing is coalescing around that name.
Kumo/Bing/whatever is regarded as Microsoft's best chance to stem the loss of the search market to Google, whose share continues to rise.
At the same time, Yahoo is rethinking the nature of a search engine altogether.
To read about Yahoo's "Web of objects," see Page 2.
Search engine updates: Kumo, Yahoo
Sources say Microsoft's upgraded search engine will debut very soon. Meanwhile, Yahoo outlines new concepts for improved searching.
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