This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft's cunning plan to make Bing the leading search engine: Bribery

Binging for pennies

The uptake for Microsoft's long-suffering search engine, Bing, continues to be so dismal that Redmond has resorted to paying people to use it.

The "loyalty scheme" offers points that can be exchanged for charity donations or music, games, devices and other stuff on the Microsoft Store. Users are awarded three points per search, up to 30 a day at Level 1.

To get an idea of what they're worth, 5,300 gets you a £5 Xbox digital gift card, which equates to 10 per cent off a current-gen game. That's quite a grind – 176 days of furious Binging for pennies. But hit Level 2, by bashing Bing for 500 points per month, and you can reap 150 points a day.

Will this get more people using Bing? Maybe. Will it take Bing to the top? Perhaps not.

Google corners a hefty 77.98 per cent of the global search engine market and doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon. Bing is the second most used at 7.81 per cent, with China's Baidu rounding third at 7.71 percent.

Google once tried a similar experiment called Screenwise. You'd use a browser extension that shared your history and habits – and wind up with about £15 at the end of the year. But it's not like the Chocolate Factory needed the cash... or traffic. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like