Interview: How Microsoft plans to juggle its three Internet brands

Microsoft's revamp of its search engine under the name Bing gives the company a third online brand -- adding to the original MSN and the relative newcomer Windows Live in its stable of Internet properties. It might seem like a lot, but each has a distinct and important role in Microsoft's online strategy, said the general manager of the company's search team in an interview this afternoon.

That was one of several topics addressed by Microsoft search GM Mike Nichols in the phone conversation from California, where Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the revamped search engine this morning. Read on for excerpts from the interview.

Q: Do you aspire to have Bing become a verb, in the same way Google is?

Nichols: I don't think that we necessarily aspire to that. That's something Steve talked a bit about at the conference today -- something that a product has to earn over a period of time that it is the definitive service for that particular category. We had several different requirements for the name of the product. No. 1 is, we wanted something that was short, that we could get worldwide, that you could spell, and when people would first hear that word, that the things in their mind would be around precision, and cutting through the clutter. The quote inside the team is, "The sound of found." That's the idea behind the brand name.

Q: You now have three online brands: MSN, Windows Live and Bing. Does Windows Live fade into the background and go away at this point?

Nichols: No, no. The idea is to really focus the brands. It's clear MSN is a portal, that's where you go to get great content, great trusted content. Windows Live is about connecting people with other people and information that they're looking for through email, Messenger, etc., as a logical extension of the core Windows experience. What we really want to do with our search brand, Bing, is to be clear about the fact that there is this experience that is 100 percent geared toward search. So it's really just a matter of focusing, it's not really a prioritization of any of the three, or necessarily setting one in the background.

Q: In terms of the technology, is Bing really all that different from what you've had in the past?

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