Microsoft is looking to buy its way into search, and I’m not talking about Yahoo.

The software maker plans on Wednesday to launch a cash back program to those who buy things after using its search.

Microsoft has details of the program up on its Web site, including a list of frequently asked questions.

“We want to earn your loyalty and reward it with cashback savings for your everyday online shopping,” Microsoft said. “We are ‘The Search That Pays You Back!’

Google Inc dominates Internet searches across the world with a major exception of Russia, a gap which Russian-born co-founder Sergei Brin is keen to fill, he said in a newspaper interview.

“Now, we have incorporated far better morphology, which is very important in (the) Russian language,” Brin said referring to a search technique which examines word construction.

Local Internet company and search engine Yandex receives about twice as many searches a day, Brin told Russian business newspaper Vedomosti during his first visit to Moscow in 4-1/2 years. “We think our search is better but it (Yandex) also has many talented people.”

QQ.com, the leading Chinese online social network reported to have more than 300 million active accounts. That is eight times the member base of Facebook–and it’s the same size as the U.S. population.

What’s also remarkable (and different from the Western social networks) is QQ’s monetization. Facebook posted revenue of $150 million for 2007 (and according to Plus8star a loss of $50 million); MySpace.com (purchased by News Corp. for $560 million) is projected to generate $750 million in revenue this year; and Bebo (purchased by AOL for $850 million) had revenue of just $20 million in 2007. While QQ reported revenue of $523 million and an astonishing operating profit of $224 million in 2007. The revenue distribution is unusual, too: 60 percent of the revenue came from services like games, an additional 21 percent from mobile services like ringtones, and only 13 percent from online advertising.

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer scrambled for cover from an egg-hurling protester during a talk at a Hungarian university Monday.

Unlike his boss, Chairman Bill Gates, who was hit in the face with a cream pie a decade ago, Ballmer managed to dodge the eggs.

Ballmer was delivering a speech entitled “You can change the world” to a group of business and technology students at Budapest’s Corvinus University when the incident occurred, according to Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos.

A young man in glasses stood up, pointed at Ballmer and loudly demanded that Microsoft return money it had stolen from the Hungarian people. Then he calmly threw three eggs at Ballmer.

A video of the outburst in a large classroom was widely distributed over the Internet Tuesday. In the footage, Ballmer crouched on the floor behind a large podium as the third egg smashed against the white board behind him.

The man, wearing a white shirt that read “Microsoft corruption,” was escorted out of the room at the behest of the dean of the university.