Here's the thing, though: Not a single one of those efforts has made a measurable impact -- at least, not by any measurements that weren't . I looked at the back in December. Since then, despite Microsoft's constant push to bring searchers to Live, the site's market share has continued to fall. And, if you ask me, a new name and new look isn't going to do much to save it.

Crunching the Numbers

Just look at the data. For consistency's sake, we'll compare Live's market share from April 2008 -- the month before -- with the most recent numbers available. We'll use data from two different companies to give us varied perspectives on both global and domestic usage.

When it comes to the U.S., Live was grabbing 9.4 percent of all searches last April, according to . Since then, with the "Cashback" program and all the other various changes, Live has dropped about one point to 8.5 percent of the U.S. search market (as of January 2009, the most recent month ComScore has calculated).

Internationally, Live was pulling in 2.5 percent of searches back in April of 2008, measurements by indicate. It's since dipped down to 1.73 percent of the global market as of February 2009.