Microsoft rocked by Live Search cash-for-clicks controversy
In a bid to prop up its floundering Live Search search engine, Microsoft is planning to introduce a new program “Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search”, which will pay corporations kick backs, in the form of free services, if they switch to Live Search instead of Google or Yahoo.
How the program will work is that corporations will receive a $25,000 “enrollment” credit, plus $2 to $10 per computer, depending on how much participating companies promote Live Search to their employees. For companies with thousands of computers this could add up to a tidy sum.
This story was broken by John Battelle on Searchblog, who also obtained a Powerpoint presentation that provided details about the new program. A key slide from the presentation states:
“Employees search the web daily with tools from Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo. OEMs and web sites are already earning credits based on searches that their users bring. Now, your organization can earn credits for Microsoft web searches and redeem them for Microsoft or preferred partner deployment and training services. More searches earns more credits towards the services you value.”
The program works so that the more that companies encourage their employees to use Live Search, the more the kickbacks the participating company will receive. There are three levels of promotion: low, moderate and high.
Some “moderate” and “high” promotions include running in-house training sessions, removing existing toolbars, setting the Explorer homepage to Live Search, and emails from the CEO to employees encouraging the use of Live Search. Companies will need to have Internet Explorer 7 installed on their PCs, rather than, say, Firefox.
Microsoft has acknowledged the existance of Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search.
“Currently, we are conducting a trial program through which Microsoft is providing service or training credits to a select number of enterprise customers based on the number of Web search queries conducted by their employees via Live Search,” said Microsoft spokesperson Whitney Burk.
“These customers, in turn, are providing valuable feedback to Microsoft on the use of Web search in an enterprise environment. As search evolves into more of a productivity tool, and revenue sharing becomes more commonplace across the industry, we are engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships such as this and our recently announced deal with Lenovo to more easily enable customers to choose Live Search.”
PC maker Lenovo has agreed to preinstall Windows Live Toolbar on its computers, as well as to set the Explorer home page to the Microsoft Live.com portal.
While some commentators have called the Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search program a bribe, I wouldn’t go that far.
With Live Search well behind Google and Yahoo, Microsoft’s Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search program smacks of desperation, and is simply a low-brow attempt at buying marketshare, which many end-users will simply find annoying.
An outraged Robert Scoble of Scobleizer had this to say about Microsoft’s recent rantings about “being in it to win it” when it comes to Windows Live at the recent Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Global Summit:
“Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where’s the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo’s Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That’s how you win.”
Scoble has hit the nail on the head.
Microsoft, stop the marketing BS and trying to buy marketshare, and focus on building a compelling search engine – that’s what will get you a loyal user base.
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March 18th, 2007
It would be nice if Micro$oft played fair, but obviously they can only rely on being a monopoly…
March 20th, 2007
I think it is a terrific idea.
No different than Google paying Dell 1 billion over 3 years to bundle its crapware on all their PC’s. In addition changing the default search provider to Google from MSN Live. Now MS gets its business back.