Microsoft, we thought you learned your lesson from the from the failure of Bing Cashback. It looks like we were wrong.

Earlier today, Microsoft launched Bing Rewards, a new program that lets users earn credits for performing actions like searching on Bing, making Bing their homepage and testing out new features. The more users perform these actions, the more credits they earn.

 

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Of course, there’s a catch — you have to download the “Bing Bar” (it’s a toolbar for Internet Explorer) onto your Windows machine and sign up with a Windows Live ID. We hope you’re running Boot Camp, Mac owners.

Overall, Bing Rewards is exactly like any loyalty rewards program you’ve used via your credit card or at your favorite store. Buy more stuff and complete certain tasks, and you get some miniscule reward. The program is clearly the successor to Bing Cashback, the now-defunct rewards program that gave you money for buying products through the Bing search engine. Cashback’s termination was announced in June, and it officially closed on July 30.

We were hoping that Cashback would be the end of Microsoft trying to (directly) buy users, but it looks like that was hoping for too much. While the program seems like a decent enough concept, we just don’t think people treat search like they do their credit cards. Are thousands or millions of people really going to switch from Google and install a god-awful toolbar just so they can get a Zune?

Microsoft, you’re wasting time, energy and resources on this rewards program. Awesome new features are going to help you win the search war, not Bing points and gift cards.