Looks like Microsoft is offering an incentive for Internet users within the US to be able to win gifts and prizes for using its MSN search engine. You can find more information about it at www.msnsearchandwin.com.
From what I am reading, you would basically use the search engine as you normally would and if you just happen to search for a keyword or term that triggers a prize, on the top portion of the results page will be a link that you can click on to try and claim your prize. I know that I don’t qualify for the prize, but I just tried it for fun and I can tell you ahead of time that the most obvious ones like “Xbox 360†or “Windows Vista†doesn’t seem to produce any prize links.
This is a pretty common marketing strategy that I have seen companies do as a way to attract new users. Incase anyone is wondering what the catch is, it is to get you to try the search engine to hopefully get you to use it more often and to adopt it as one of your main Internet searching tools. I guess you wouldn’t have much to lose as you can test it out to see if it is a worthy search engine or not and at the same time you can win some free stuff.