While talk of the weekend may have been around whether or not a $20bn Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is back on the cards, there were a few other bits and pieces that caught my eye.

Firstly was Mary Jo Foley's post about the continued push to rebrand Live Search as Kumo. Mary-Jo has jumped on some of the vertical search domains now registered by CSC Corporate Domains, including Kumosearch.com and Kumotravel.com. While the continued land grab for kumo domains is a strong suggestion of things to come, the cost to Microsoft of backing out before announcing is still very low.

Secondly was the article I read today about Yahoo further expanding its mobile partnerships. While these corporate strategic alliances/joint ventures are commonplace, one statistic caught my eye. Yahoo is the default search engine for 850million mobile subscribers (emphasis mine). With mobile search and advertising key sectors still not dominated by Google, a Microsoft acquisition of these Yahoo users could be a big contribution to future search growth. (Yes I know subscribers doesn't equal users).

Any other search related stories caught your eye? Feel free to drop them in the comments below.