Microsoft Opening European Search Centers »

October 3, 2008

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Steve Balmer of Microsoft announced Thursday that they were opening 3 R&D centers in Europe as part of their ongoing efforts to catch up to Google in Search Engine market share.  The search center locations would be in Munich, Paris and London.

Microsoft also announced that it was going to be increasing its $600 million/yr European research and development budget.  They are also anticipating employing several hundred including software developers.

The center in Paris is expected to be open in March 2009 and they are getting some pretty nice tax breaks too.  Microsoft will get 30 euros back for every 100 euros it invests.

Speaking in Paris, Balmer said:

We are the challenger, not the leader, in search, but we believe strongly that search is in its infancy and there is so much room for innovation. For companies like Microsoft search is the key for unlocking huge new opportunities in advertising.

In the US, Microsoft barely has 8% of the search market share, compared to Google’s 62%.  But in Europe, Microsoft’s share is even less at 2 percent.

New Microsoft Pay to Search Program »

October 1, 2008

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Microsoft started an initiative back in May called Live Search Cashback which provides rebates to users of its search engine who search for and purchase products through Microsoft Live.

It was a novel approach to attempt to increase search engine market share.  Currently, Google has a commanding lead at about 63%.  Yahoo! is second with just under 20% and Microsoft is third at just over 8 percent.

The latest “pay to search” program from Microsoft is called SearchPerks and it works pretty simply:

1. Visit the site using Internet Explorer 6 or higher and sign up for SearchPerks.
2. Download and install the tracking program to a Windows PC.
3. Use Microsoft Live Search and earn “search tickets” every time you search – up to 25 per day.
4. Redeem those tickets for prizes.

The first time you signup, you are credited with 500 tickets and the first prize point is 5 music downloads for 525 tickets.  You can even get things like airline miles.

It could be worth a check because it is sort of like Microsoft giving you $5 to use Live Search.  If you download music, typically each song costs about $1 (5 songs = 5 bucks).  So, signup for SearchPerks, use Microsoft Live Search for a few days and redeem your 525 tickets for 5 music downloads .