Reports have it that in the coming year, Microsoft’s search engine - Live Search - will be rebranded as ‘Kumo’. Earlier this year, during the Search Marketing Expo conference, the president of the company’s platforms and services division, Kevin Johnson, hinted about a possible change of the ‘Live’ brand.

Launched in 2005, Live Search, Microsoft’s effort to catch up with the web giant Google, had replaced MSN Search in 2006. Despite the company’s efforts, Live Search acquired only 11 percent of the search market, far behind its main competitor, Google.

Johnson explained that a brand ‘fix’ is needed as Microsoft decided to drop its bid for Yahoo, and improve its Live Search engine. In the past two years, Microsoft has launched several online services branded as “Live” such as Windows Live Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger. In Johnson’s opinion having multiple identities for the same online services is confusing for the users.

LiveSide.Net reports that Microsoft has taken control of the domain name Kumo.com from its registrar and directing internal traffic to it as a test site. Kumo means in Japanese ‘cloud’, and some reports point out that maybe it could be related to Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative.

However, according to reports, very few people in the company are privy to the chosen name of the new brand and it could still change. Though that does not mean that Microsoft is definitely going to adopt ‘Kumo’ as its new search brand, it is still evident that the company has decided to focus on revitalizing its own search effort over its former ambitions for Yahoo’s search business.