Microsoft Gives Back with Cashback - The Skeptics
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As you might guess, Live Search cashback has more than its share of doubters. It's safe to say that anything launched by Microsoft nowadays will attract a large group of pessimists. First of all, so many people have grown accustomed to Google being their primary search engine that they may not even bother switching to an unfamiliar, less reliable source, especially when they can find sites that offer the same rebate deal as Live Search cashback on Google.
Then there's the fact that Live Search will skew its results towards their own affiliate vendors. Granted, there are over 700 vendors with more likely to join, but those willing to do comparisons on other search engines might be able to find a better deal. Remember, it's very easy to check competing sites and search engines; they're always just a click away on the Internet.
And because this is a copycat business, who's to say that Google or anyone else won't come up with a similar service of their own? Unless Microsoft, actually does take over this share of the search market, most users will probably use other search engines to at least compare prices. After all, we are in a recession.
Google's world class search engine has rampaged through its competition for years now, a role Microsoft was all too familiar with just a few years ago. Microsoft was on top of the tech world for so long, it'll be interesting to see what the reaction toward Google will be in the next couple of years if they continue to control a vast majority of the market. Microsoft knows from experience that if you control most of a market, it's nearly inevitable that people will start to get unhappy with you.
In fact, we've already started to hear the rumblings of dissatisfaction with Google. Luckily for them, Microsoft is willing to shoulder the majority of that load once again -- sure, it might make the software giant disliked even more, but they'd be glad to take on the excess market share. Still, I'm sure Google can handle the burden.
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