The industry is readying for the grand unveiling of Microsoft’s hotly anticipated new search engine next week.

If the grapevine has its speculation right – the new search engine will get its first moment in the spotlight at next week’s D: All Things Digital event.

Microsoft has been less than subtle about the development of the new search engine with several interface and functionality tests deliberately accidentally made public, and who hasn’t heard the endless talk about Kumo.

All the rumors and conjecture will come to an end when the covers are lifted next week.

And it seems that the most interesting part of the unveil might be its name. Yes – the last minute speculation is that the new search engine will carry the “bing” brand.

Branding aside – will the new Microsoft search engine be enough to peg back some of it’s lost share of search?

Well the Wolfram Alpha launch confirms people are still interested in exploring new and innovative ways of searching. But is the keenness to explore enough to change habits?

Kumo or Bing promises to introduce semantic search with new left hand navigated, categorized universal search results – but I’m not sure it’ll be enough to break Google’s stranglehold on the market.

What do you think? Will interface and technology innovation be enough to steer users away from Google to the new Bing/Kumo?

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