Microsoft Rewards halts daily point earnings in Edge after killing the Xbox app in just a week — No more freebies!

[Windows Central]

Microsoft reportedly removes Rewards point earnings for Edge. Initially seemingly only affecting the UK and Ireland, it's since spread further.

Microsoft Rewards halts daily point earnings in Edge after killing the Xbox app in just a week — No more freebies! : Read more

 

[John McIlhinney]

I was wondering whether they may have been forced to make these changes. As suggested in the article, the fact that you can earn points for doing so may be one of the main reasons that some people use Edge, which may have been considered anti-competitive by the EU or someone else. As for having to wait between searches, that reduces the likelihood that someone will just click a bunch of links to get points when they're not actually interested in the results of those searches. That may have been seen by some as artificially inflating Bing's search numbers.

 

[John McIlhinney]

I've also noticed that, outside of the daily set, tasks that were previously worth 5 or 10 points are now worth 1 or 2, so fewer points there too.

Note that I am receiving additional points by logging into the Microsoft Start app on my phone and also for viewing news items in it. I suspect that the Bing app does the same. They also recently had a special event where you got 5 points per day and then 100 points every 8th day and then 1000 points if you did that 12 times in a row. That seems to have finished and I didn't even notice, so I assume that I got my 1000 points. Last time I recall noticing, I was about 2/3 of the way there.

 

[TheFerrango]

It's gone in Italy too, it's far slower to assign points even for searches from the Bing app, and rewards for a few challenges (that worked flawlessly even outside of Edge) have been lowered to 1-2 points too

 

[rmark66]

This is all sad, will have to see if I keep trying to earn points now. I had heard that the Xbox app on console was going away because it was getting integrated into a tab on Home. Maybe that is not going to happen now?

 

[rmark66]

Actually, I guess they are just evolving the rewards program. So, I guess standby for more changes: https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/...s-as-rewards-program-loses-daily-edge-points/

 

[Arun Topez]

I was wondering whether they may have been forced to make these changes. As suggested in the article, the fact that you can earn points for doing so may be one of the main reasons that some people use Edge, which may have been considered anti-competitive by the EU or someone else.

Giving reward points is not anti-competitive. Many companies and stores give points for using their services/buying their products. And nothing is stopping Google from doing the same thing, they just choose not to. This move is most likely just part of Microsoft's major budget cutting measures so that they continue to make record profits (as we've seen with them slashing a huge chunk of their workforce, and only giving freebies if it doesn't cost them while getting something in return. They're becoming more anti-consumer, anti-people, and pro-enterprise, pro-AI every year.

 

[John McIlhinney]

Actually, I guess they are just evolving the rewards program. So, I guess standby for more changes: https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/...s-as-rewards-program-loses-daily-edge-points/

They refer to fairness there yet, while PC, Mobile and Edge points were worth 150, 100 and 20 points per day in the US, they were worth 90, 60 and 12 here in Australia. That suggests that they may be worth different amounts again in other countries. I guess what matters is what you can redeem for the points you get, so if rewards themselves cost more points in the US then it evens out. I'm not sure whether that's the case or not.

 

[John McIlhinney]

Giving reward points is not anti-competitive. Many companies and stores give points for using their services/buying their products. And nothing is stopping Google from doing the same thing, they just choose not to.

I wasn't referring to points in general. I was specifically referring to points for using Edge, which is the default browser on Windows. The EU in particular is very touchy about things like that so there is every chance they could see that as anti-competitive. Google doing the same in Chrome when it is the default browser on Android may be viewed the same way. What the EU and other governing bodies consider anti-competitive is up to them, so you offering your opinion on the matter provides no real weight. I'm not saying that they have in this case but it wouldn't surprise me, given some of their other decisions in this area.

That said, I think they may be placing restrictions on Microsoft regarding Edge on Windows, although I can't recall specifics. Maybe that was allowing it to be deleted or something like that.