If you're not spending $40 billion or more to buy a chunk of the search market, you have more than enough cash to target a subsection, such as shoppers. And this may be what Microsoft has in mind, according to Seattle-PI newspaper reporter Todd Bishop. He's given an "advance look" at the piece on his blog in Microsoft to lure search users with cash. He says:
Microsoft's "Live Search cashback" site, set to be unveiled Wednesday, promises to pay back a portion of the purchase price -- ranging from about 2% to more than 30% -- to people who use it to find designated products and buy them online from participating retailers. . The company has signed up a long list of merchants to participate in the program -- including the online sites of large retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Sears, Home Depot, J&R Electronics, Office Depot and others.
He adds:
The cashback program won't come as a complete surprise. Gates hinted at the possibility in late 2005. The IDG News Service quoted the Microsoft chairman at the time pointing out how much money Google makes from search, and saying that Microsoft might reward its search users with free software, or cash.
Of course, people may well use Google most of the time and Live Search for five minutes' shopping a week, though that may not matter much. Advertisers really don't care where you do your searching: they only care about where you click on a link and buy something.
Google has already tried to become the web's shopping engine, with what was originally called Froogle, and Google Checkout, its payment processing service. But Froogle, announced in 2002, was terrible and Google Checkout doesn't seem to have much traction.
But while Microsoft may be able to hit one of Google's weaker spots, I don't think it will do anything to stop Google's march to a 90% share of the search market. It's a gimmick, not a game-changer.
Charles Arthur adds: and (for the moment at least) it is - stop me if you've heard this one before - US-only. So let's see, that makes the Zune (remember the Zune?), the Amazon MP3 store, the Napster DRM store... for the 51st or 52nd state, we're not doing that well, are we?
