A report on the Seeking Alpha website said Microsoft plans to pay consumers cash to use its Bing search engine to make purchases online rather than Google, Yahoo or others.
Microsoft intends to refund a portion of consumer purchases, up to 50 percent, for purchases made on e-commerce sites direct from Bing searches. While initially it may sound as if Microsoft is just throwing money around, in reality it is essentially relinquishing the fee it would be paid as an affiliate of these e-tail sites. Instead of pocketing the money for leading a consumer to a site, it is allowing its fee to go to offset the shopper's purchase.
While it has not achieved Google-like stature at this point, Bing is off to a decent start with 25 percent of adults in the U.S. aware of the name. Microsoft has been somewhat successful in grabbing some share from Yahoo but not Google. According to comScore, Google has nearly two-thirds of the search market followed by Yahoo with just under 20 percent and Microsoft at 8.4 percent.
Discussion Questions: Will paying consumers who buy online from Bing searches result in greater share of the search market for Microsoft? How much of an affect will Microsoft's payment plan have on affiliated e-commerce sites?