Microsoft Set To Unveil Kumo Next Week

Microsoft is set to introduce its new search service Kumo next week according to sources familiar with the matter.

Microsoft will likely unveil Kumo at D: All Things Digital, a technology conference held in Carlsbad, California, according to the Wall Street Journal. Kumo has been internally tested by Microsoft employees for a number of months.

The company hopes Kumo will help it better compete with search leaders Google and Yahoo. Microsoft has remained a distant third in search engine market share and advertising revenue.

"In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes," wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of research and development for Microsoft's online services division in an internal memo in March.

Besides gaining search share Microsoft aims to use Kumo to reduce the length of Web searches by grouping the results into categories and display related discussion forums and videos.

Google led the U.S. search market in April with 64.2 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo (20.4%) and Microsoft (8.2%) according to comScore.