After withdrawing its unsolicited acquisition proposal for Yahoo, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer indicated that the Redmond company's online search and advertising strategy was not based exclusively on the integration of the Sunnyvale Internet giant. Chairman Bill Gates confirmed that Microsoft would increase its search share organically, since the failed takeover of Yahoo could no longer haul it as the no. 2 of the search engine and online advertising markets. The attempted takeover of Yahoo, as anything that Microsoft does in terms of search, is a direct jab at Google. In this regard, Microsoft unveiled its latest initiative, a project that could strike at Google's jugular, just as well as it could have no impact at all in terms of boosting the Redmond company's search share: Live Search Cashback.

Live Search Cashback is an attempt to buy Google's users with hard cash. For the time being, Google pays nothing to its users, maintaining a cash flow only between advertisers and the websites serving ads. In contrast, via Live Search Cashback, Microsoft promises searchers top dollar. Essentially, the program will ensure that the Redmond company returns a percentage of the price for products acquired after using Live Search. It seems that it is willing to go as high as 30% of the product's price with its cashback.

"Microsoft Live Search cashback is "The Search That Pays You Back". Find great deals on millions of products from hundreds of brand name stores that you know and trust. You will be able to earn cashback savings based on a percentage of the product price. Your savings will be paid to you via your choice of a deposit to your PayPal account, direct deposit to your bank account, or a check in the mail," reads Microsoft's definition of Live Search Cashback.

The company will not pay a cashback on all the products that will be bought after being found via Live Search, but only on the items offered by its partners, which will be identified by a special icon, featured in the image at the top of this article. What Microsoft is doing is to bridge the gap between consumers and vendors in a way that offers both segments not only search but also "profit." At the same time, the company is reported to move away from the traditional Cost-Per-Click model, to Cost-Per-Acquisition.

"As long as [users] click on an eligible product or store link at our Live Search cashback site, they will earn cashback savings on all eligible purchases [made] during your store visit. Different products may have different cashback percentage rates, so the rate for other products [users] buy may be higher or lower than the rate displayed on the Live Search cashback site for the product initially searched for," Microsoft revealed.

Live Search cashback is an obvious effort from Microsoft to artificially increase its share of the search engine market, albeit one less expensive than Yahoo. Via the integration of Jellyfish which the Redmond company acquired in 2007, and that was running a similar program, Live Search is now transformed into a search engine that pays both online vendors and users. The initiative has been tried before, but never at this scale, or with Microsoft's immense resources behind it. But at the same time, there is no guarantee for success, especially since Microsoft has been continually losing ground on the search engine and online advertising markets to Google.