Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt is speaking at a technology conference in San Francisco today, as well as Vic Gundrotra, the search giant's vp of mobile and developer platforms. But before they take the stage at Morgan Stanley's tech conference, Microsoft has already grabbed the search news spotlight thanks to news of Microsoft's Kumo.com, the code-name for its revamped Live Search service.

The company has launched an internal test of the revamped search service, code-named Kumo, according to Boomtown's Kara Swisher who got the goods -- and screenshots -- on the start of Microsoft's internal Live Search yesterday.

"The Search team needs you," reportedly wrote Satya Nadella, the head of Microsoft's search, in a memo to all MSFT employees, also obtained by Swisher. Nadella asks the company for feedback on Kumo's results and stays relentlessly positive about Microsoft's opportunities with search innovation. The memo says:

"In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes. These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don't find what they need from search today."

The results interface has a clean look, but that's to be expected these days. The question is, how is it improving search as we know it? We'll probably hear more about it from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, who is speaking to the Microsoft MVPs today. Microsoft's quest for better search market share, via better search innovation? With the growing dominance of Google in search and its move into Microsoft's bread and butter markets (applications), you almost want to cheer for Microsoft to help keep Google's market power in check.

Kumo is Japanese for cloud and spider, which makes sense. But while some folks think the name sounds like Cujo, the crazy dog in Stephen King's novel, I think it sounds like Sumo, the ancient Japanese sport of wrestling, which, as it steps in to the ring with Google, makes a lot of sense.

Now that's a meme for our times.