Microsoft Corp launched Wednesday its "Bing for Schools" program. Microsoft's Bing is a search provider that the company is pushing against its major search engine competitor, Google. The "Bing for Schools" program is an ad free alternative to Google's search engine.
Microsoft director of search, Stefan Weitz said the project would also help show school kids how to use Microsoft products.
"We hope that we demonstrate the quality of Bing to teachers and students and also their parents, and once they see how good it is, we hope to see increased usage outside of schools too," Weitz said.
Microsoft had signed up the Los Angeles Unified School District and Atlanta Public Schools among other school districts. Microsoft promoted Bing as an alternative that would protect students from seeing ads or adult content when they do Internet searches.The Bing for Schools program also includes free Surface tablets.
Students redeem the gadgets by accumulating points through the continuous use of Microsoft's search engine. The program also gives out course materials for training young used about the appropriate use of the Internet.
The two companies, Microsoft and Google, had been competing to get schools to use their productivity software. Microsoft relies on the sale of their software. Google's dominant search engine, on the other hand gets 95% of their revenue from ads.
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