Microsoft affords $1M prize to of us keen to make use of Bing • The Register

We’re not saying Microsoft is determined for individuals to make use of Bing, however a $1 million sweepstakes that grants entries to customers of the search engine positive quacks like a duck.

The competition, which kicked off final month, is open to anybody with a Microsoft account (who resides within the US, Canada, UK, France, or Germany) and a willingness to depend on Bing’s oh-so-accurate search outcomes. As is commonly the case with sweepstakes like this, entrants can acquire a number of probabilities to win in the event that they maintain performing varied duties, a lot of which need to do with utilizing Bing, to earn digital tickets.

The sweepstakes web page, ostensibly a Microsoft Rewards contest and never a Bing-centered one, signifies that every eligible individual can earn as much as 200 entries for doing issues like altering their default search engine to Bing and utilizing it to do a search, putting in Microsoft Edge or the Bing app for iOS and Android, utilizing Bing Journey or simply utilizing Bing to get a climate report, translate textual content, or discover a recipe.

Further entries are awarded for roping in further contributors, shopping for stuff on the Microsoft Retailer, and incomes a “Bing every day streak” through the use of the engine to go looking thrice a day for seven days in a row.

No matter you do on-line, simply please do it with Bing, Microsoft appears to be pleading – and with good purpose.

Do not imagine me? Bing it

Launched in 2009, Bing has barely moved the needle on Google’s search dominance in its 15 years of existence. Microsoft has tried – arduous – to convey Bing into the highlight, even counting on compelled product placement on exhibits just like the relaunched Hawaii 5-0 that solely ended within the search engine being lampooned for its efforts.

Extra lately, Microsoft has tried to spice up Bing’s profile by including its ChatGPT-based Copilot AI bot to the service in 2023, a undertaking that resulted in minuscule beneficial properties for Bing’s share of the search engine market, primarily based on the newest figures from StatCounter.

The addition of additional generative search options this previous summer season additionally have not amounted to a lot, with Bing’s market share briefly surpassing 4 % final month earlier than dropping again down into the mid-3-percent vary initially of this month.

In different phrases, nothing else has labored up to now, so why not strive making a gift of one million bucks to anybody keen to make the change – at the very least briefly till they attain their most 200 entries within the contest, with the entry interval closing on the finish of December.

As we famous above, the competition kicked off final month and will very effectively be the explanation for the slight bump in Bing’s share of the search engine market in October that appears to have already abated. Whether or not it’s going to give Bing an additional enhance between now and the top of the yr stays unclear. ®