Microsoft Cashback, cash for searching… and buying
Well it looks like Microsoft has just launched their Cashback program. You can check it out now by visiting the site. There you can search for products and if you click through and actually buy something get back what seems like about 1-4% (advertisers only pay Microsoft per sale).
Initially I thought this was going to be like when Amazon starting providing that 1.3% discount if you searched using A9 at least a couple times a week. After all TechCrunch did say that they intend this to steal searchers from Google. But at this point it seems like it is a specific site - not rolled as ads for LiveSearch, which I believe is coming at some point. As it stands now, though, it seems much more like a Pricewatch or even an affiliate aggregator like FatWallet than an ad play. Perhaps, less good than Pricewatch since it only will show you prices of people who are involved in the cashback program.
To me, though, here’s the thing. Even when they roll ads out this isn’t going to steal users from Google. It may pull in some advertisers, why not, since they can do it without risk since they only pay for people who actually buy something - they can do both Google and this program. It may also steal some of the users of Pricewatch or FatWallet (since it seems to give marginally bigger payouts than the latter). But searchers don’t use search engines for the ads. They use them to find stuff that is on occasion product. Searching is a habit and people habitually use Google (their share of the search market is already 3 feet high and rising), the lure of getting a couple percent back on a purchase when you happen to be looking for a product to buy at that moment won’t be enough to take any noticeable traffic from the G. (now if someone can figure out a way to get both the FatWallet discount and this cashback one… we might actually be talking about money that you’ll actually notice!) And really, if for some weird reason this is actually successful - what is to stop Google from adding this same feature to AdWords and Froogle? (I know! I totally remembered froogle, just for this post). Shrug, ah well, that’s just me, what do you think?
