Something I Didn't Realize and Don't Understand ...

Very few people use Bing. I knew it wasn't as popular as Google, but I didn't realize how huge the differential is until I clicked on a Statista link in an article by Cory Doctorow at The Atlantic: Nearly 90% of web searches are done through Google, less than 10% are done through Bing.

I've got Bing set as my default search engine -- if I type something other than a URL in the top bar of my browser, it returns Bing results*, and when I open a new tab it's Bing I see.

Why? Because Microsoft Rewards (affiliate link!), that's why. I've already redeemed my rewards points -- which I accrue whenever I search Bing, and for doing fun little things like taking quizzes and polls -- for one $10 Amazon gift card this year, and I'm close to my second.

I doubt that I'll manage $10 in Amazon gift credit per month 12 months in a row ($120), but I'll probably hit $100 for the year, anyway. Getting paid $100 a year to use a particular search engine is better than not getting paid at all. And I'm free to use other search engines when I think I'm not finding what I need through Bing. Which isn't that often.

I really don't understand why everyone isn't into getting paid to do what they're doing anyway.

* Anecdotally, I've found that when I paste the headline for a paywalled article into Bing, I'm more likely to get a link to a cached version of that article in the results than I am with Google.