Desperately seeking searchers
Having been unable to buy search market share from Yahoo, Microsoft is now going to try to buy market share directly. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Microsoft Corp. hopes to make gains on Google Inc. in the lucrative business of Internet search through a new service that pays consumers who buy items they find through the software company’s search service.
The Redmond, Wash., software maker is rolling out a service called “Live Search cashback” that gives consumers money back on certain purchase of products found through Microsoft’s live.com Web search service. The service, built upon comparison-shopping site Jellyfish that Microsoft acquired in October, is available at http://www.live.com/cashback.
Getting your refund reminds me of the old rebate schemes. The article says that it works this way:
A Microsoft Web site describes the cash-back service as a way for consumers to use search to get deals on products. The site says that savings on products would be based on a certain percentage of a product’s priced and be paid to consumers via a check, direct deposit to a bank account or an account with eBay Inc.’s PayPal online payment service.
To use the service, consumers will need to open a free account by providing certain information such as billing details, according to the Microsoft site.
Follow-up: Here’s two posts from Search Engine Land with some more about the Microsoft cash-back scheme. Neither is all that impressed; one is from Barry Schwartz and the other is from Danny Sullivan.
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