A newly launched program, SearchPerks, gives you frequent flyer-style points for every Live search you perform (up to 25 per day). You download and install a program, which tracks your searches and tallies your total. Then, next spring, you can redeem your points for any number of exciting prizes.

Oh yeah, and you can only do it if you’re using Internet Explorer. (Pure coincidence, we’re sure.)

The move reeks even more of desperation than the company’s CashBack deal back in May. But even that approach — which basically amounted to paying people to use the search engine — didn’t seem to work: Microsoft’s Live Search has lost users since the start of ‘08, dropping about 1.5 percent in its share of the search engine market.

(Google, for what it’s worth, gained users in the latest ComScore analysis. It’s now at about 63 percent of the total search engine market. And it’s not even paying people or giving out prizes. Go figure.)

Microsoft’s already on its knees and begging. So what’s next? There’s only one logical step.

You heard it here first.

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Weeks after announcing a plan to give discounts for products found through Live search queries, Microsoft has added in a new option to save directly on eBay “Buy It Now” items. eBay offers found via Live will now have built-in “Cash Back” discounts. Unlike the other Live Cash Back partners, the discount is applied directly to your eBay total without the need to use Microsoft’s interface.

The discounts seem to be about 10 percent per item.

Is it just me, or is the smell of desperation getting unbearable?

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“Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner.”

Microsoft has decided that rather that try to be a full scale Google competitor on many fronts, it’s better off focusing on core services that are “sustainable business models.”

All is not lost for those who partnered with Microsoft in these projects (and remember, a lot of the partners were people who didn’t like what Google was doing), Microsoft will incorporate the index into general search and is “encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines.”

Although the jury is still out on this weeks announcement of the Live Search cash-back promotion, Microsoft’s renewed focus on core search and traffic is a positive strategy at a time consumers need choices as Google comes to dominate the space more and more.

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