According to this InfoWorld article,
But they [Google] don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.
[...]
In its bid to share revenues with users, Microsoft may give free software or even cash to users, said Gates, who did not discuss further details.
Wow! While Google is trying to cut Microsoft’s main revenue stream (which in turn funds or could fund MSN) by pushing open source software like firefox, it looks like Microsoft may try to cut Google’s revenue stream wich is coming from on-line ads.
Do not take Bill Gates’ words for granted. Paying back search engine users is something that may never happen. If they were to do something like this they would have to rely on some kind of strong authentication scheme -or start a fight against all kind of bots and scripts that will generate fake search queries and clicks. To me, Gates’ words look more like a threat against Google -stay away from our business and we’ll keep out of yours.
But, in any case, you can see that this is war! Which side are you in?
Interesting, I had never thought about it. But I guess it is impossible to award the search engine users.
I mean it gives them really perverse incentives to use the engine all the time and it would surely bring an unnecesary increase in internet traffic…
When people use Firefox, how does that affect Microsoft’s revenue stream?
IE costs money to develop but doesn’t bring in any money as far as I can see.
As far as paying search engine users is concerned, talk is cheap. MS hasn’t written any web search users a check, have they?
IE is one of the strongest tools Microsoft used to have to lock users to its platform.