Microsoft wraps Live Search in chicken and breadcrumbs

Microsoft has cranked up the PR machine by releasing a little more detail about the forthcoming revamp of its Google-wannabe Live Search brand. The software vendor revealed to the Wall Street Journal yesterday that its search engine re-launch project carried the code name of Kiev. It’s understood that Microsoft has hired …

[M]

Hooray!

Now I know what I will have for tea tonight! Chicken Kiev with beans and waffles!

[Steve Davies]

Who Cares?

As long as Google and other engines deliver the goods, no matter what Microsoft offer in this area is going to be small fry, irrelevant and have an insignificant market share.

Only the people swayed by the "I'm a PC" ads will be even slightly affected by this move.

Breaking news: Waste of time & Money spotted in Redmond.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously

Wouldn't microsoft be better off admitting the search game has been lost. Maybe they should concentrate on tv OS business and try to get that right?

[Tom]

Needs more then a name change...

"Up to now, Microsoft has struggled to pull in new users for its service, in part because of people failing to distinguish Live Search from the firm's other online properties."

No, it's because it can't find it's own ass with both hands.

[Aaron]

Mmm, chicken Kiev.

They're redoing Live Search? That's nice, I guess. Maybe they can make it not suck quite so much, but I still don't think anyone'll bother to use it, except those few poor misfortunates who haven't yet figured out how to put Google in IE's search box.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it dies horribly

Useless tossers. The only reason their crappy search gets any traffic at all is through abuse of their desktop monopoly and because they've got such a stupid amount of money to keep throwing at it.

[James Comer]

Good, google could use some competition

Or we'll all be on here in 3 years time ranting about how the evil empire of Google has runied blah blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Wut?

So if I want news I go to msn, where I can search using live, which will now be called Kiev, or maybe not. Meanwhile if I want to see my mail I go to hotmail, which redirects to live mail, which could be called anything after the rebrand. And my MSN messenger is called Live messenger, or sometimes windows messenger depending on the version I use. But MSN as a news network still keeps going, although in order to search the news I get linked to the live news search page, which tells me news is not available in the uk, unless I go to the live news page directly at which time news is available. From Live. There are also maps. But that just links to Multimaps.

Of course, due to compatability problems all of this is done on the Microsoft internet explorer, which runs on Windows Vista.

And they think adding more brand names is a positive idea?

[zenkaon]

Is this just another rebranding?

or have Microsoft actually come up with a useful search algorithm?

My money is on a rebranding and zero improvement on they're crappy algorithm. If they think anyone in Britain is going to take a kiev seriously they they are about to get a shock as we fall over laughing our arses off and they tiny market share plummets