There is no doubt that Microsoft is about to do battle with the mighty Google - both are currently trying to negotiate a deal with AOL after Yahoo! withdrew from that particular fray. Microsoft has seen off much bigger rivals before and one suspects quite relishes the challenge of knocking Google of its No 1 perch.

We now seem to have a possible MSN tactic to achieve this monumental task, that is, being paid to use their engine.

In the interview with Bryan Glick in Computing Magazine ( http://www.itweek.co.uk/computing/news/2145417/search-engines-offer-financial ), Bill Gates said

”As search becomes competitive and people realise that other offerings are as good [as Google], or are even significantly better, there will be price competition.

You will get some free content or a cheque, or some incentive to use a different search engine. Competition for users has not even kicked in. I can assure you it will not stay that way.”

The really interesting bit comes next:

”We are going to run some experiments on that in the next year.”

Now that could throw the search engine world into turmoil, because if MSN starts offering an incentive to use its engine then Google might be forced into following suit. The idea of Google paying us to use their engine for search is just too sublime!

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