Microsoft Gives Back with Cashback - Attack on Google
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Right now, Google has 61.6 percent of the search market share, according to comScore, and is growing steadily. Microsoft, on the other hand, has 9.1 percent and is slowly shrinking. So they had to do something drastic in order to steer a large chunk of search traffic in their direction, and perhaps just as important, away from Google.
Additionally, it's worth noting that Microsoft's main source of revenue comes from Windows and Office. Google and others have already started to make desktop software obsolete. So it would be felicitous for Microsoft to muster some kind of retaliation.
This isn't the first time someone has tried to offer cash rebates for buying products through their site (e.g. Ebates and Fatwallet), but it is the first time it's gone directly through a search engine. If Microsoft can accumulate a majority of search traffic for ecommerce, that would be more than a step in the right direction. And what better way to attract people than to give away cash?
Clearly this only pertains to ecommerce-related search traffic, which, as I mentioned earlier, is an ever-growing market. Throw in the fact that 80 percent of search revenue comes from commerce-related searches, and you have yourself a winning formula. Or is it?
Remember, Microsoft is giving most of their revenue back to the users! How do they stand to benefit? They don't, really. Don't get me wrong, they probably won't lose money, but the main goal is to see that Google gets hit as hard as possible. I guess they call it a search "war" for a reason.
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