Even Ballmer has had to admit that, with a market share , Live Search is officially Dead Search. With the hopes of a hookup with Yahoo scuttled, at least until Carol Bartz is in a more conducive mood, Microsoft has had to go to Plan B: Start over.

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Microsoft's code name for its new Dead Live Search is Kumo, which is depending on which Kanji characters are employed. (Its Native American name would probably be "spider who drifts like cloud," or possibly "cloud that scuttles like spider.") But according to reports that first surfaced on last week and have been and other mainstream pubs, Microsoft's new, improved, slightly-less-sucky search engine will be called "Bing."

Why Bing? A fondness for old Crosby tunes maybe. Or ex-Detroit Pistons hall of famer . Or because it rhymes with "bling." At least they're not planning to call it Windows Live Search Ultimate Multimedia Edition 2009 version 1.0a.

Ad Age reports that Microsoft plans to drop an $80 million to $100 million marketing campaign on our heads, trying to convince us Google causes cancer (or something), so picking the right name is at least mildly important. And it appears that name may well be Bing. In March, ; that also appears to be around the time it purchased the Bing.com domain.