Many of you have probably seen the press coverage in the last day or so about the internal testing Microsoft employees are doing on our search product. There’s a good deal of excitement brewing over this test, both internally and externally, which we’re always glad to see.
There have been lots of questions about why we’re not opening this test to the public. This sort of internal testing is actually fairly commonplace at Microsoft and something we do with many of our products before we decide to release things publicly. Our hope is that our employees will give us great feedback on our new features and that it all becomes part of the external experience soon.
In the meantime, we thought we’d give you a sneak peek at a screenshot of one of our favorite queries. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
There has also been a fair amount of speculation around the use of the Kumo brand and URL, and whether this means that we are rebranding Live Search. We’re using the Kumo brand and URL for this test experience to make sure employees understand they’re in a test experience. We believe this will encourage more active feedback. As for rebranding, it’s something we’re still considering.
As always, we promise to keep you updated via this blog whenever there are new developments.
Mike Nichols, General Manager, Live Search
Great to see Live Search continually optimizing itself to be a better search engine.
It's great that the results will be better, but the aesthetics of that search engine are horrible. At first I thought it was a screenshot of a PPC parked page. I agree with this article:
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/02/microsoft-kumo-let-s-hope-its-results-look-better-it-does
Please make it look like the 2019 video. Add some mootools in there.
I believe all the hype is not about the search engine, but about the rebranding. We need a new MSN/LIVE, but a TRUE new service.
Hotmail or Live.com or MSN are old and people are sick of them! Even if they are good services, the brand is bad, people are tired of MSN related stuff, and they prefer to use google instead of live.com services.
With a completely new rebranding (mail included @kumo.com, please!!), it would sound like a completely new web service (with the core that already exists, and that's good).
@kumo, KumoMaps, KumoSearch, KumoGallery, KumoSpace, KumoMessenger.... (maybe kumo is not the best name, but live is not a good name either!).
Please give us a fresh start, a fresh image, and "kill" the relation with the old and death services (MSN, hotmail, Live.com, that could exist, but out and separatedly of Kumo.com)
It looks great, keep up the great work...
I have been a Google user for the last 4 years, but recently starting using Live, just a little bit.
I wood like two able two save what iam searching four and share with my windows live messager conntacts.
I am using Live Search ever since it was launched. When US version of Live Search started updating with the background images every day, I started telling every one about it. I have no issues with the search results at all. I get the right information I need. The only issue is, please make the background images to all the countries. Atleast for India.
Mike Nichols, the general manager of Live Search, put up a blog post today regarding the testing of Kumo
The sneak peak looks great. I can't wait for this to go live. Some features such as hover preview would help accomplish much more in my day to day search sessions.
Microsoft Search, MSN Search, Live Search, Windows Live Search, and now Kumo? Yea, Microsoft is still finding themselves with a brand for search. Currently, Live.com is the search portal for Microsoft, but everyone knows they have issues branding that
I don't know why people don't like the colors. I think they look good. I'm tired of the blue and green.
And why not testing it with motivated people ... like myself!
Could be of good use for you.
... from Wednesday, March 04, 2009 9:39 AM by EXPAT456
contact me on testingkumo@gmail.com
Like the layout. Don't love the colors. Not sure about the Kumo name, but anything is better than Live. Hope the results are better. Hope the "Did you mean" is better (that's an area where Google is still way ahead). Most of all I'm concerned about your overall strategy. I hope there's more to it than simply trying to out-McDonald McDonalds. Because that strategy hasn't and isn't going to work. You need to establish your own niche and be clear about what that is.
Instead of using "Song", "Lyric", "Biography", "Music", etc headings...I'd like to see minimal use of color coding. I actually mocked it up for you in MS Paint.
http://cid-de99518ba71cb6d8.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/KumoRefresh.jpg
Also notice...
- did not color code what you term "web" results...these are listed first and probably would distract too much if contained color.
- slightly indented items under "all results"
- placed an arrow next to photos & videos to imply that you can scroll through more than just 5 items. These is also something that could be enhanced in the future using Silverlight. Perhaps a carousel could add some visual impact without over doing it.
Couple of other suggestions...
- The color coded bar adjacent to list items could have white vertical text to further remind consumer what the item refers to. And clicking on the bar could probably should drill down into the result further.
- The page count at the bottom of the page should go beyond just 1-5...I really think you should use the full page width. Or at least up it to 15 at a time.
- The Videos listed should also span the entire width of the page (to the right). In other words, the add section on right should not span the entire length of the page.
- Finally, I think there should be some preference options add so users can custom the search order. For example, maybe I want videos listed at the top of all my searches.
I have a bunch of other ideas.
I'm all for anything that reduces Google control of the Web. Google search has really gone downhill--many results are either trash, sites posing as info when all they hold is links to commercial sites and such.
I also like the basis for the search results--keywords often don't suffice.
And for God sakes, don't put Wikipedia at the top of every single search page like Google does.
Also, I'd hope the search platform will not be as politically biased as far as news and commentary returns from Google.
best, KBD