Their product is so bad they have to bribe users to use it ;)

It is a solid way for a second tier player to gain ground in any web market and here Balmer is trying to do it for the biggest market. At the very least, this is a good way of forcing the market to take less money from consumers.

There are a million cashback sites out there though. You can get cashback, or commission on anything you buy online already. Just seems a bit desparate to me.

Yes, there are a million cashback sites because it is profitable. Now MS has the biggest one and they can upset a market also. It won't save their company, but can anyone actually state why this is a bad business decision for Microsoft?

Well for me, it cheapens the product. It's like they feel they need to give people stuff to get them to use their product.

IMHO they should concentrate on making a better product that people want to use without being paid to use it.

Certainly it cheapens the product. They already lost their chance to win the Search Marketplace... Arrington talked about Yahoo doing a "scorched earth" tactic on the market. MS is doing the same thing by attempting to take away users while simultaneously cheapening the market.

At this point, is there anything Microsoft could do to beat Google at search? The only thing left is for someone to offer a completely free API.