--- title: "Desperate Microsoft Will Pay $1,000,000 to Someone Who Actually Uses Bing" description: "Microsoft wants you to use Bing so badly, it'll pay a user a million bucks who switches to the search engine as part of a huge sweepstakes." date: "2024-11-06" modified: "2024-11-06" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-pay-bing-users" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "bing" - "Google" - "microsoft" - "the digest" --- # Desperate Microsoft Will Pay $1,000,000 to Someone Who Actually Uses Bing ![Microsoft wants you to use Bing so badly, it'll pay a user a million bucks who switches to the search engine as part of a huge sweepstakes.]() *\Image: Mateusz Slodkowski / SOPA / LightRocket via Getty\* ## Make a Killing To Bing users out there — don't all jump up at once — Microsoft is offering the chance to win $1,000,000. Such is the tech giant's desperate attempt to shake up its search engine's role as an extremely distant second fiddle to Google. There's not only a main prize of a million bucks up for grabs, but also $10,000 for another ten winners. The [competition]() started last month and — lucky you — there's still time to enter, though you'll have to be a resident of the US, Canada, UK, France, or Germany for a chance to win. Enter with your Microsoft account and complete little quests like setting Bing as your default search engine, or downloading the Bing app, or doing all sorts of other Bing-things to increase your odds of winning. And hell, why not? It's not like Google and its blundering [AI Overviews]() make for all that amazing of a search engine these days. ## Uphill Battle Microsoft's efforts to topple Google Search have been comically Sisyphean in their futility. Bing launched in 2009, and since then, Google's market share of the search engine space more or less hasn't budged from 90 percent globally. With that dominance, Google also reaps about 50 percent of US search advertising, adding to a whopping total of [$175 billion]() global search revenues in 2023. Microsoft, meanwhile, might consider it cause for celebration when its search market share goes from 2.8 percent to 3.4, as it did [between 2023 and 2024](). And to its credit, it did make a dent — or at least a divot — with its early Bing AI ChatGPT integration efforts, giving what felt like the first time [Microsoft got a leg up on Google Search]() pretty much ever. Suddenly the tech industry believed Google could bleed, and using chatbots that could supplant conventional search engines — and thereby Google's biggest cash cow — was how they'd draw blood. ## Money to Burn That underdog story hasn't quite panned out yet. Google remains the all-powerful Big Bad, and for all of the newfangled AI features stuffed into Bing (now shelved under the Copilot label), it [hasn't resulted]() in a significant bump in Microsoft's search market share. As of this month, Bing accounts for 4.15 percent globally, [according to StatCounter](). So, when all else fails, why not literally pay people money out the wazoo to use your product? It's certainly not everyday that Microsoft does a giveaway this big. Either it's that desperate, or just embarrassingly flush with cash; after all, the million dollar prize is just one-seventy-ninth of its CEO's [pay package]()! **More on Microsoft:** *[Big Tech Is Facing Down a Major Problem With Its AI Plans]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()