Msn - Paying You To Search

[Spectre 0]

Apparently, Microsoft is looking at paying real money to users to use the MSN search engine. Not as an affiliate or a publisher - just general, everyday searching that you would otherwise use your search engine of preference for. In an interview, Bill Gates stated that:

 

"As search becomes competitive and people realize that other offerings are as good, or are even significantly better, there will be price competition. You will get some free content or a check, or some incentive to use a different search engine. Competition for users has not even kicked in. I can assure you it will not stay that way... We are going to run some experiments on that in the next year."

Keep in mind that this is not happening yet, and is only an idea as to what MSN might incorporate into their search engine at a later time. But as it is coming from the company behind the engine, it is unlikely to be false (as much as you may love or hate Microsoft, a corporation in such a position can't go stating blatantly false information).

 

I've received a few emails regarding this from various people, as well as from SEO-related and other general newsletters. One article by David Utter fom WebProNews on Entireweb noted that:

 

Microsoft has a cash pile believed to be worth about $50 billion dollars... the company could use some of that to bankroll a campaign to get users to switch search engines; once its advertising network gets under way, some of its profits could take over funding incentives.

 

Amazon.com offers a small percentage discount on its web site for users of its A9.com search engine and toolbar. After a certain number of searches go through A9, users become eligible for a 1.57 percent discount on their purchase. That could pale in comparison to what Microsoft might offer.

[sanbeand 0]

well bill have to accept his service is good but not enough to make us choose one over the other so in my opinion if they are gonna change some things in order to have more and more people, it is probably they use his engine but just for the curiosity of what new or what have changed.. u know all those things u say when a new product is released and then after certain period of time u say again "ho ok it was fun.. but let go back to our true engine" lol... its better bill gives all that money to needed people or something...cheers!

[sangdukseo 0]

Ok, I don't care what cheap crap their handing out to use their search engine, because the purpose of a search engine is to find what you want in the shortest amount of time. Google's better, period, and so if it stays that way when microsoft launches this "paid to search" service, i'm not switching, or using it. Not once. Nada. No way.

[Arigato 0]

This seems like a bad way to promote a search engine. All this will do is cause users to make false searches just for the bounty. At the same time there will probably be paying advertisers in the search results and they will be losing their money and won't advertise at MSN anymore. It seems like a pathetic attempt to try and get users to move from google or yahoo.

[Compute 0]

Wow if this is true Microsoft is going too lose a lot of money. Like Arigato said people will just make faulse searches just for the money then go and use google to really search.But i hope they do it and pay people to search so we could all make money easy .

[Spectre 0]

I don't think so. Considering the money the company has, and the software developers that work for them, I'm sure they will come up with some fraud detection method.Of course this is a marketing ploy to try and get users to 'convert' from Google or Yahoo! to MSN. It's this little thing called 'competition', and Microsoft seems to be looking at turning up the heat a little bit. Biases aside, if MSN can outdo Google, then I would use it. At the moment, it's not nearly as good - but if they are serious about overtaking the search engine giant and actually succeed, then people aren't going to have a problem switching. The paid search part would just be an incentive.

[lucentio 0]

In the end its not the companies that benefit from schemes like this its the consumers..so Microsoft, Google , Yahoo , Amazon and other companies can just carry on competing until they go bankrupt but i don't think Microsoft won't go under with a huge amount of money in its reserves its virtually impossible for the company to close down its like trying to take down a 400m giant with a toothpick

[Maillennia 0]

I think te real benefit to MS it self will not be so much of people really using their search .. it can be a way to get people search with MSN and gathr data from there.Things like what are the 'hot searches'What are the common search patternsWhat are the typical results that people wantHow effeicient and effective is their search engineWhat are the bugs?What additional features that users want?Also, it forms a very good way to draw eyeballs there and from which they can 'recoup' from additinal services like 'pay-per-click', sponsored words and banner-ads .. things that Google already had been doing .. .. and doing very well.It has been noted that MS is losing out Google in terms of innovative offers and I believe they are trying to close up the gaps .. as far as I hate MS .. I do agree that they have got some of the smartest brains at their service .. so well .. I won't complian being paid though .. I think at least 30-40% of my time online is spent on searches ..

[itssami 0]

I dont have idea about it, i also heard from some one that msn will provide some kind of benefits (free hoting,some money,and things like that to the members who have been using their mail box (hotmail) very often , i dont know what they are planing to do but may be there thinking to start it coz they see that Google has really become famous.

[Plenoptic 0]

If msn starts giving away money or special products etc; they will lose so much money within the first week they would have to stop. People would search every second just to make money. Anyone could just go on to msn and search for the entire day just to make money. They would probably cancel it before it even lasted a week. Maybe they will pull something off like Xisto. They might give away free hosting or something, but in order to keep your site up you would have to search msn to build up credits. That would probably be the only way it would work. Maybe not necessarily web hosting but something along those lines. It's pretty interesting what competition over the internet is coming to these days. Who would have thought that search engines might start giving people stuff just to search using their web site?