As I'm writing this post, no source could tell for sure whether this is an effort to rejuvenate Live Search or simply another Microsoft's search project. Speaking of which, Kumo is a Japanese word that can be translated to "spider" or "cloud".
Breaking Google's dominance in search engine market is surely an uphill task. Microsoft needs to bring innovation and major improvements onto this new project otherwise it might be not be able to catch up with Google again.
Because the project is currently revolving in Microsoft's internal circulation (early stage of testing) it is very hard to form any opinion related to this new project. Anyway, judging from the screenshot (more here)
above, it looks promising. We can see the explorer pane along with relevant information for the related search keyword on the left and the search results seem to be brilliantly organized.
As mentioned earlier on, the screenshot only shows the early stage of testing, so the final product may have a whole new look. I hope Kumo (or whatever name may later be given) can give a better competition to Google.
Not that I'm a great fan of Microsoft products, but it definitely gives a good check-and-balance to the overpowering Google.