In his talk this morning at a Merrill Lynch conference, Google CFO George Reyes was asked about Microsoft's offering users incentives to use MSN search. His response:

"Who knows what Microsoft is likely to do, you know, are they likely to sort of write large checks to buy advertisers? Maybe, but will that really stick us over the long run if we have the superior advertising platform? Probably not."

Reyes also said that growth is slowing, according to Reuters.