Microsoft Dangles $1 Million — and a Mercedes-Benz — to Lure You Into Edge

Microsoft Dangles $1 Million — and a Mercedes-Benz — to Lure You Into Edge

In its boldest promotional gamble yet, Microsoft is running a $2 million sweepstakes directly inside the Edge browser, offering cash and luxury cars to users who simply switch defaults and search with Bing.

Microsoft has launched what is arguably its most aggressive consumer promotion in years: a sweepstakes called the Microsoft Rewards Total Prize Drop 2026, offering a grand prize of $1,000,000 in cash and three luxury Mercedes-Benz vehicles — each backed by a $170,000 spending budget — to users who engage with its Edge browser and Bing ecosystem.

First spotted by technology news outlet Neowin and corroborated by PCWorld, the promotion is displayed prominently as a banner in the upper-right corner of every new tab in Edge. The banner is persistent — users must manually close or pause it each time, and there is no single setting to permanently dismiss all promotional content.

“Get Edge, set as default browser, search once from the address bar — earn 5 entries. You could win $1,000,000.”

How to Enter — and Earn Extra Chances

Microsoft has made the barrier to entry intentionally low: simply creating or logging in to a Microsoft Rewards account and performing one Bing search qualifies a user for the sweepstakes. However, the rules outline a broad list of activities through which participants can accumulate additional entries:

• Setting Edge as the default browser
• Visiting the sweepstakes event page
• Sharing personalized referral links
• Using the Microsoft Rewards extension
• Redeeming Microsoft Rewards points
• Using Bing and Copilot mobile apps
• Trying Bing Image Creator & Video Creator
• Using the Microsoft Store
• Downloading designated apps and games
• Enabling OneDrive backup on Windows 10/11

Each completed action translates into additional sweepstakes entries, effectively converting routine Microsoft product use into lottery tickets. A user who sets Edge as their default browser and performs a single search is credited with five entries immediately.

The Prizes: Cash, Cars, and Thousands of Instant Wins

The headline prizes are a single grand prize of $1,000,000 USD paid via wire transfer, and three first prizes each consisting of a $170,000 spending budget toward a purchaser-selected Mercedes-Benz vehicle at an authorized dealership. Any budget remaining above the vehicle’s purchase price — up to $30,000 — is paid directly to the winner in cash.

Beyond those top-tier awards, the promotion includes 2,367 instant-win prizes distributed to users who perform daily Bing searches, making the giveaway a persistent daily engagement driver rather than a one-time sign-up event.

A Pattern of Aggressive Promotion

This is far from Microsoft’s first attempt to drive Edge adoption through incentives and nudges. Over the years, the company has faced sustained criticism for tactics ranging from intrusive default browser change prompts — deliberately triggered when users download competing browsers like Chrome — to targeting heavy Chrome users with in-OS alerts encouraging a switch.

In previous cycles, rival browser makers including Google and Opera publicly condemned Microsoft’s reward-based approach as effectively “bribing users” into switching. Despite that criticism, and the attendant negative press, Microsoft has clearly concluded that the strategy delivers measurable gains in Edge’s market share. The Total Prize Drop doubles down on that calculation with the largest financial prize the company has attached to a browser promotion to date.

Microsoft has not backed down from reward-based promotion despite years of public criticism — and the 2026 sweepstakes is the largest, most elaborate version yet.

What This Means for the Browser Market

Edge currently holds roughly 5–6% of the global desktop browser market, a distant second to Chrome’s dominance above 65%. Whether a sweepstakes can meaningfully close that gap remains to be seen. Analysts note that while Microsoft’s rewards program has built a loyal user base within the Microsoft ecosystem, converting habitual Chrome users into long-term Edge adopters has proven persistently difficult.

For Microsoft, however, the sweepstakes serves dual purposes: it incentivises Edge adoption while simultaneously driving engagement across Bing, Copilot, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Store — all products where higher user activity translates into advertising and service revenue that far exceeds the cost of the prize pool.

The Microsoft Rewards Total Prize Drop 2026 is active now. Eligible users can enter at rewards.bing.com. No purchase is required, and the sweepstakes runs until May 21, 2026.