Who doesn’t like free money. Assuming you’re someone who does, watch out for Microsoft’s new pop-up offer on your Windows PC: Free gift cards you can trade for Amazon gift cards, Roblox points or free subscriptions. There’s almost no catch.
This is Microsoft’s latest campaign to push Chrome users to the Edge. Its browser continues to be an also-ran compared to Google’s hyper scale browser for Windows users. Chrome now has more than 78% of the market, Edge less than 9%.
“If you search ‘Chrome’ on Bing,” Windows Latest reports, “Microsoft now dangles 1,300 Rewards points to keep you on Edge for Windows 11. Microsoft Bing also says you can use the 1,300 Rewards points to get a gift card, which will buy you real products.”
Microsoft has tried a raft of different tactics to switch Windows users to Edge. Mostly these have centered on security and safety, promoting Edge’s benefits at Chrome’s expense. But we have also seen installs interrupted, frequent nags and banners, and a Chrome versus Edge checklist, mirroring Apple’s push for Safari versus Chrome.
If you don’t want the free money for yourself, Microsoft also says “you can donate to one of over 2 million profits.” And if that doesn’t appeal either, “you can even extend your Windows 10 support for another year with 1,000 of them,” XDA-Developers points out.
The browser wars between Google and Microsoft have been running for years, and thus far Edge has failed miserably to dent Chrome’s market share. In reality, the real threat to the current status quo is the new AI browsers hitting the market.
So, we can assume we’ll now see tactics more focused on Gemini and Copilot than security and special offers. Meantime, keep an eye out for those ads.
“Can Google, OpenAI or other companies use similar media-rich ads on Bing for their products?” Windows Latest says. “Apparently not, as these so-called ads are only designed to promote Microsoft products.” And this is very targeted on Google’s browser. “We’re not seeing ads for other browsers, such as Opera, Firefox or Brave.”