Will Microsoft Increase Its Market Share In Search 3 Months After Launching Live Search Cashback?

On May 21st, Microsoft announced its new strategy to get people to use its search engine, Live Search Cashback. They can't make it better so they are going to pay you to use it. Microsoft will pay consumers who find and buy a product via Live Search a certain percentage of the purchase price back. The blogosphere is split on whether this will have any difference to their share of the search market.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch writes "This new approach is both desperate and brilliant." and "Will It Work? Yes, it will work and it will almost certainly increase Microsoft’s market share in search, particularly in commerce search."

However he seems alone in his enthusiasm. Henry Blodget at SAI says it is a great idea that won't work. MG Siegler at VentureBeat is more scathing saying "The question is if this will have any meaningful effect on Microsoft’s current 3rd-place search market share in the search business. The answer? Probably not. Microsoft should worry about improving its algorithms or coming up with a completely new way of doing search — not paying users to use an inferior product."

So by August will Microsoft manage to increase its market share from the 9.1% recorded in April?