Cash back! Microsoft is so ruddy desperate to grab a bigger share of the online advertising pie, that it appears the firm is prepared to offer users who visit its search engine and then click through to buy a product some kind of monetary recompense. Advertisers, meanwhile, are rumoured to be offered a deal whereby they only pay per user purchase rather than user clicks in order to advertise on the search engine.

Lovely stuff, although the likelihood is it’ll take a lot more than a bit of tinkering like this to supplant Google, or even challenge it, as the dominant player in this market. Could it be MS is trying to fight back after it was so publically knocked back by Yahoo. Aww, chin-up Redmond, you’ll learn to love again, I’m sure of it.

21 May 2008