One big surprise: The job market with the strongest growth in tech jobs–with a net gain of 900–was Oklahoma City. Don’t pack up the U-Haul just yet. Yes, it added the most technology jobs of the 60 cities in the survey, but it also had one of the smallest overall tech job pools, accounting for only 18,000 jobs, ranking 57th of the 60.

The New York statistical area, which includes New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had the largest pool of tech jobs at 317,000. It lost 8,700 jobs during the survey period, which as we all know was during the worst throes of the recession and the catastrophe that struck the data-driven financial industry. Fifty-three out of 60 cities saw job losses. Nationally, the group found that the tech industry lost about a quarter million jobs in 2009.

Statistically, the TechAmerica report considers San Francisco, Oakland and the San Jose areas as separate. But if you added them all together, tech jobs would outnumber New York at 394,000. San Jose led the nation in tech pay, at an average of $132,100 per year, and not surprisingly had the highest concentration of tech jobs as a percentage of the workforce: One job in three is tech-related.

The only markets to see job growth aside from Oklahoma City were places like Huntsville, Ala., and San Diego. You can take a look and see how different cities fared here.

BoomTown always likes to play the quarterly game of guessing exactly how eye-popping the loss in the Online Services division of Microsoft will be.

In the third quarter, for example, it was $713,000,000–yes, all those zeros!

But that will be just a rounding error to Microsoft (MSFT) in the fourth quarter if the software giant can meet Wall Street expectations of strong gains in profits and revenue, due to improving computer demand.

Analysts expect Microsoft to earn 46 cents a share for the three months ended in June, with $15.2 billion in revenue. In the same quarter a year ago, the company posted profits of 36 cents a share on $13.1 billion in revenue.

What a difference a year makes, especially with PCs selling well and Microsoft offering the popular new operating system Windows 7.

Intel (INTC), a Microsoft partner, already showed a lot of leg with strong results last week.

But despite the upturn, Microsoft still is unlikely to show such strength in its online businesses, as well as others such as online games and mobile phones. That’s because the company has had to make massive investments to compete with rivals such as Google (GOOG).

Microsoft, of course, is hoping that its online search and advertising partnership with Yahoo (YHOO), which is expected to launch by year’s end, will move the market share–and, thus, profit–needle.

If that happens, there is only one thing to do: Par-tay in Redmond!

Amazon’s MP3 store now has 12 percent of the digital download market in the U.S., according to NPD Group. That’s up from eight percent a year ago. But those sales don’t seem to have come at Apple’s expense: NPD puts the iTunes market share at 70 percent, compared with 69 percent a year ago.

So who’s losing market share? NPD hasn’t explained (yet). But based on previous surveys from the data company, I assume it’s some combination of Rhapsody, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Zune marketplace and Napster. And if I had to guess, I’d point to Napster, which has really struggled since Best Buy (BBY) purchased it in 2008.

UPDATE: I was wrong! Looks like Amazon’s gain stems primarily from Rhapsody’s loss. The music subscription service, which also sells downloads, saw its share drop from four percent to 1.3 percent within the last year (see table below; click to enlarge).

In any case, the new data show Amazon making steady, grinding progress. Which makes reports of Apple strong-arming music labels that gave exclusives to Amazon a little more interesting.

Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) remains the biggest player in music retail, period. NPD says it now owns 28 percent of the U.S. market, up from 24 percent a year ago. Amazon (AMZN) is also up, from nine percent to 12 percent, which ties Wal-Mart (WMT) for second place.

[Image credit: Paolo Camera]

Say this about the toolbar and distribution deals, which Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz keeps saying were too pricey for the Internet portal: They have certainly given Microsoft’s search offering, Bing, a very nice boost.

In all likelihood, it is that and more causing Bing to make solid gains on Yahoo (YHOO), whose market share declined yet again this month, according to comScore’s monthly report of search market share in the United States.

According to comScore (SCOR), Microsoft (MSFT) saw its share rise to 11.5 percent in February, up from 11.3 percent in January.

Meanwhile, Yahoo dropped from 17 percent to 16.8 percent, another month in a troubling run of them. Each point of share lost, according to many sources and analysts, represents about $100 million in online advertising revenue.

Bartz has also repeatedly said Yahoo’s share would improve soon, as the company innovates its consumer search experience in the wake of outsourcing search technology to Microsoft as part of a recent deal.

And it goes without saying, still at the tippy-top as the mice battled, elephantine search giant Google (GOOG) also managed to eke out a small gain, rising to 65.5 percent 65.4 percent.

Instead, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said today, you ought to be happy to work at Google…because it’s Google. In that sense, Schmidt said, the recession of the past year has been good for the company since it has highlighted the difference between working at his company and other options–including not working at all.

Schmidt’s comments came during a press conference he and Sergey Brin held today, which was wide-ranging and went down several interesting avenues. I’m reproducing a long chunk of it here from my recording of the chat, because I think it addresses one of the core challenges Google (GOOG) has: How to keep the innovative energy and intelligence the company had from its garage start-up days now that it’s a 20,000-person monster.

Google has been grappling with this for quite some time, but the challenge became more evident in the last year or so as the company began cutting back on perks like free food and low-cost child care, and even made its first-ever layoffs. (The photo at the top of this post is from the 2008 version of the company’s annual “Google Dance,” which was canceled this year).

Those moves were made in response to the economy, but they also did double duty by helping the company “reset the culture,” Brin said.

The exchange kicked off when a reporter asked the duo about a sense of entitlement among Google staff, in reference to a passage in Ken Auletta’s new book about the company.

Brin: I do think there was a period of time where the culture, as it were, was misinterpreted. I certainly remember when we would start, when there were a  few of us working in the garage, and occasionally [co-founder] Larry [Page] would rollerblade in with a few sandwiches for food. And that grew up into everybody’s expectation: “Oh, they should have all the gourmet food they want, at any time.”

I think it’s important to reset the culture from time to time. And I think several years ago we did that. Clearly, people had extrapolated from our past practices what the vision might be. And having actually been there, and knowing the rationale…we decided to, for example, we significantly cut down all the snacks that had been available. [laughter]

[The question is reframed: Isn't the real perk at Google supposed to be stock options, and aren't those much less valuable, now that the company's go-go growth days are over?]

Brin: Well, I don’t know. it depends on where in the graph you look. Certainly it has fluctuated ever since we’ve gone public. Up and down, so…

Schmidt: Let’s say this: It is axiomatic that the best thing to do is to found a multibillion-dollar corporation with free stock, take it public and have the difference between zero and the stock price….That would be the maximum gain possible. For most people, they don’t have the wherewithal and the skills to do that.

Brin: Or the luck.

Schmidt: And luck. Yes, I suppose. In your case, I think, skill and brilliance. People make decisions….The way to state this is that Google pays very well. Google is clearly a growth company, by any metric. And people at Google don’t work for those reasons at Google. We don’t want them to come to Google for those reasons. We want them to come to Google to change the world.

Life is short. And everybody here understands that. Life is short; you should work on the things that are most important. If you want to work on what Google is working on–cloud computing, search, all the things that we talk about all the time–then come to Google and we will pay you well.

That works. We don’t want a different workforce than the one that I just described.

And I would also answer the entitlement question, as I understood your question, as to say that the last year has been very good at solving that problem.

The tightening that [CFO] Patrick [Pichette] in particular did, who I think is the current Google hero, really did change the culture in a much more pragmatic way: “We’re happy to work here. We’re happy to be employed. We love what we’re doing. Our friends, you know, have been laid off.” It’s been a maturing process. And I think a generally good one.

[Image credit: permanently scatterbrained]

It would appear that Intel’s loss is, for the most part, AMD’s gain. Intel’s (INTC) shipments declined 16 percent while those of its rival increased 13 percent. Great news for AMD (AMD), which has been having a rough time of it lately with more than two fiscal years of losses and little sign of an upturn.

And what of the broader chip market? IDC says it remains weak, but believes a bottom may be in sight. Overall, shipments were down, but their rate of decline appears to be slowing. During the first quarter, world-wide shipments fell 10.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008. That’s not nearly as bad as their 17 percent decline from the third quarter to fourth. So the good news here in that the bad news could have been worse. Says IDC: “The PC processor market is still in weak condition. While OEM demand picked up notably towards the end of the quarter and going into April, IDC is wary that the demand was due to OEMs replenishing their inventories rather than reflecting a return of solid end demand and return to market normalcy. IDC continues to expect modest sequential processor unit shipment decline in 2Q09.”