14 DAY TRIAL // In case you needed a reason in order to at least try out the MSN Toolbar, Microsoft has managed to come up with an alluring offer. The Redmond company has tweaked the toolbar so as to make it easy for users shopping online to access financial incentives via its Live Search Cashback program. Cashback permits users who purchase products online by first using Live Search to track them down to receive cashback payments through the program. The MSN Toolbar is now able to keep an eye out for Cashback offerings and to inform the user of their presence. The beauty of this is the fact that the MSN Toolbar is not limited to Live Search, and will alert users of Cashback promotions even if they use rival search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
“The MSN Toolbar contains a cashback–offer-detecting mechanism. This means that wherever you search online — whether it’s Yahoo, Live, Google or Craigslist — the toolbar will gleam an icon if there is cashback available for the item you searched for,” revealed Mikko Ollila, product manager, Live Search. “It never fails, and when you click the gleam it brings you to the page where the cashback offer is available.”
Fact is that the toolbar might never fail, but the actual Cashback program did fail in the past. Perhaps the most prominent Cashback blunder was on Black Friday in 2008, when a service blackout prevented users from taking advantage of promotions advertised. The MSN Toolbar will certainly not be able to prevent any Cashback problems, as its functionality is limited only to identifying purchase options associated with financial incentives for the buyer.
“The toolbar comes with a bunch of useful functionality — and it definitely comes with some peace of mind: You won’t miss a great deal, wherever you go online. Don’t leave your home page without it,” Ollila added.
The MSN Toolbar is available for download here.
