Bing users and lovers of bribes, this could be your kind of day.  Something called Bing Rewards has launched in preview form, and the program is designed to help people acquire stuff in exchange for helping Bing in a few small ways.

Remember the way candy bar, popcorn, and wrapping paper sales worked as a kid?  Bing Rewards operates in a similar fashion.  Users will earn credits for completing tasks ("searching on Bing, setting your homepage to Bing or trying out new features of Bing"), and then those credits can be redeemed for different prizes.

To be clear: this program is not an exact replacement for Bing Cashback.  Gift cards are as close as any of the prizes get to real money.

Still, between gift cards (to mainstream establishments like Amazon and Starbucks), movies, kitchen accessories, and some gadgets, the selection of prizes isn’t bad.  It’s possible to redeem credits towards charitable donations, as well.

So here are the three other factors people might view as catches: first, participating in Bing Rewards means downloading the Bing Bar.  It’ll track users’ credits and list what offers are available.

Second, Internet Explorer is required.

Third, in the same way it may have been necessary to sell 12,000 candy bars in order to claim a simple pocketknife, the Bing credit-to-prize exchange rate looks a little high in some cases.  Participants will need 2,315 credits in order to get a 2 GB SD card, for example.