# Duck Duck Kumo?

> I just read in Advertising Age that Microsoft is planning to spend as much as $100M on a marketing campaign for its new “Kumo” search engine. For perspective, that’s about as much as they spent to acquire Powerset, and almost…
> URL: https://www.smartdatacollective.com/17548/
> Last modified: 2009-04-02T05:32:00+00:00

I just read in [Advertising Age](http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=135722) that Microsoft is planning to spend as much as $100M on a marketing campaign for its new “[Kumo](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/23/microsoft-to-rebrand-search-will-it-be-kumo/)” search engine. For perspective, that’s about as much as they spent to [acquire Powerset](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/01/ok-now-its-done-microsoft-to-acquire-powerset/), and almost as much as [Endeca’s revenue in 2007](http://www.endeca.com/corporate-info/press-room/pr/pr_2008-1-29.html). And they’re spending it on ads. I’m not an Apple fan boy by any means, but I can’t help thinking of this  [“I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLfEVGwjrA). Still, in a multi-billion dollar business, I suppose $100M is chump change.

But what jumped out at me from the article was this paragraph:

According to one person close the situation, the forthcoming campaign will be careful to not position “Kumo” as a competitor to Yahoo or Google and instead cast it as a reimagined search engine that ups the game by yielding fewer but more-focused results. The proposed strategy is probably a good — if not the only — way to go.

That sounds a lot like…[Duck Duck Go](http://duckduckgo.com/). I know that [Stefan Weitz](http://thenoisychannel.com/../../2009/03/17/why-are-people-so-clueless-about-search/), director of Live Search, and [Gabriel Weinberg](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/), who is Duck Duck Go, at least occasionally read this blog. I’m curious if my observations are even close, and what the coincidence of vision bodes either effort. I assume that Weinberg isn’t planning to spend $100M on advertising.

		
							
					
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[Link to original post](http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/04/02/duck-duck-kumo/)

			
				
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