Microsoft’s playing dirty. They’ve created an ingenius ploy to get more parents, teachers and grandparents to give their Bing search engine a test-drive. And it’s the “won’t somebody think of the children?” card.
Individuals who decide to make Bing their default search provider will get to donate $3 of Microsoft’s money to the school project of their choice. Users simply have to visit the “Help Bing Give to Schools” page and click on the button that says “Choose Bing and Donate”.
Then, a check box will pop-up saying, “Make this my default search provider,” and you will need to provide an email address in order to get a donation code. After getting the code from your e-mail inbox, you simply pick a school project at DonorsChoose.org, a partner with Bing in this program, and type in the code to apply Microsoft’s donation.
Now, this is a really clever idea. Because there’s no real downside for the user, besides the fact that it’s a fairly complicated process for such a small donation. But, anything for the sake of helping children, right? And through the power of social media, this opportunity could get viral quickly.
But the real question is, will these people like the Bing experience, or immediately switch back to their default browser before even giving it a shot. It’s almost like a PPC campaign with a $3 bid for a click-through to see what Bing’s all about. Microsoft obviously believes they can get a good return on that investment.