Contentinople - Eve Bergazyn - News Bits: MSN Live Search Share Plummets

Written by Eve Bergazyn

Tuesday, November 25. 2008 at 11:50 AM EST 2 comments

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It looks as if gorgeous photographs with links to answers of tangential questions aren't enough to win over (or even keep) MSN Live Search's users. The site's share of search went down in Nielsen's October search rankings. Waaaay down.

The No. 3 search site now has 11.4 percent of total searches, down a whopping 19 percent from last year, according to Nielsen's press release. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is still No. 1 with 61.2 percent of total search, up 8.1 percent, and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) stays at No. 2 with 16.9 of the market, which declined overall by 12 percent.

The bad news for Microsoft comes as there are rumors of its Live Search undergoing rebranding, reports WebProNews. Apparently, the new site will be called "Kumo," which means spider, or maybe cloud, in Japanese.

In other news:

YouTube Inc. is heeding users' cries (well, maybe more like complaints) for a better-quality video player. Following the lead of Hulu LLC and other professionally produced content purveyors, the still-UGC-heavy site has announced on its blog that it's introducing a bigger, 960-pixel-wide video player.

Remember the Movies.com deal between Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) and Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK)? Here's a refresher following the acquisition of the movie site by Comcast's Fandango.com earlier this year. The recent news is how much the site went for: $17 million on June 18, 2008, resulting in a pre-tax gain of $14 million, reports PaidContent.org.

Tags: Business, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo, YouTube

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Mistakes In the article
atrius
Rank: Pasha
Tuesday November 25, 2008 5:04:04 PM

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Hi Eve,

If you don't mind I'd like to point out some mistakes in the article. First of all there no search engine called MSN Live Search. MSN Search was the old name and it was rebranded as Windows Live Search in 2006.

Secondly, you say that Microsoft is going to rebrand Windows Live Search as Kumo as if it is a fact. The only thing known so far is that Microsoft bought kumo.com. Nothing more nothing less. The rest is just a rumor. It is very likely that kumo.com will be about cloud computing and nothing about search. Of course there is still the possibility that it will be the new name of Windows Live Search.

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Re: Mistakes In the article
Eve Bergazyn
Rank: Caliph
Tuesday November 25, 2008 5:17:31 PM

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Hi there,

Kumo.com was not announced as the new name for Microsoft's search engine, but the article I linked to did mention that there was speculation on the Web (the tech community does like to speculate) that it was intended for the Microsoft's search rebranding. Sorry if I was unclear!

Also, in the future if you notice any mistakes or corrections, please email editors@contentinople.com.

Thanks.

Eve

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