Microsoft has entered the charity space with a new US search engine called Search and Give. www.searchandgive.com. The premise is simple, sign up to the service [using your MSN/Live account details], nominate your chosen charity and start searching. Microsoft tracks the searches for the year and then delivers a cheque to the nomiated charity at the end of the year.
Microsoft makes the numbers look attractive, $324,000 donated since September 2007 which looks good, but is it really that much? On the website, Microsoft shows examples of how a user searching 100 times per month for 12 months could earn their charity $12. Not really that much in the grand scheme of things.
Here in Blighty, we have www.everyclick.com which to date has donated £452,653 to charity [Microsoft's donation looks a paltry £164,000 in comparison]. I believe Everyclick is slightly different that the donations are made on click revenue rather on searches, which may account for the greater revenue [plus it has been running longer.]
The cynics amongst us may look at this as yet another [desperate?] ploy to get users onto their search tool [they have already launched a cash back scheme] but it certainly offers another reason to use the service.
There are no published plans to bring this to British shores.
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