Microsoft is trying to make its Live.com search engine a hit on the web, and the only means of doing so that the Redmond giant has come up with is to offer monetary incentives. Microsoft has come out and announced that its cashback offer has increased from 25% to 40% (on some items only), money that you will get back “instantly” as opposed to two months from now. On the downside, Live.com recently crashed, leaving users unsatisfied and prompting Microsoft to issue an apology and some explanations.

“When we asked users about the improvements they'd like us make to Live Search cashback, many said they want to receive cashback instantly instead of waiting for 60 days. Well, I'm happy to announce that we've just released the Instant cashback feature with eBay. Instant cashback will be eligible for some, but not all users. Eligible shoppers will be notified online after completing a purchase on eBay,” says Kok Waii Wong, Group Product Manager with Microsoft’s Live Search.

Microsoft claimed that the Live.com instant cashback offer would make the users’ holyday shopping a more “rewarding” experience, but reports have it that people who expected to get the 40% rebate, received a much smaller percentage discount, not to mention that Live.com was down for about a day. The incident occurred due to three factors: there was a considerable traffic increase that lead the system to crash; the Microsoft team had to rebuild the Live Search cashback databases and redeploy them; the incident had to be investigated. Microsoft says that the problem has been dealt with and that similar incidents will not occur in the future.

What does Google, the search engine king have to say about this? According to Nicholas Fox, Director of Business Product Management, Google will continue working on their product so as to make it more efficient and provide a better user experience; they will not rely on such a gimmick to attempt and increase Google’s popularity.