The new pact, which stretches over hundreds of pages, details the financial commitments as well as delineating which company is responsible for which technical components as Nokia looks to make Windows Phone its “primary smartphone operating system.” The signed deal is being announced just as Nokia is set to report its most recent quarterly earnings and chat with investors and financial analysts.

In an exclusive joint interview late Wednesday night, Microsoft phone unit President Andy Lees and Nokia Executive Vice President Kai Oistamo talked about the contract and the technical work that has already taken place, as well as the work that remains ahead–including convincing the legions of Nokia developers not to jump ship as the company makes its huge leap from Symbian to Windows Phone.

Both executives stressed that things are ahead of schedule and that considerable progress has been made since the February announcement in London.

“We’ve gotten to where we have gotten to faster than we thought,” Lees said. “Now we know who is exactly writing each piece of code.”

To get to this point, there have been lots of flights back and forth from Finland to Redmond, as well as countless conference calls, e-mails and meetings as the collaboration has expanded from a small group of people talking about a deal to a larger team hammering out the details, and a vast effort at both companies to actually get started on the joint work needed to put all those terms and conditions into action.

The pace of progress is critical for both Microsoft and Nokia. Microsoft, of course, is still playing catch-up after essentially starting over with Windows Phone 7. The company is hard at work on a new version of the Windows Phone operating system, code-named Mango, due out later this year. That software aims to close key gaps with Android and Apple’s iOS, adding features like improved browsing and better multitasking while also giving software makers greater access to the phone’s hardware, allowing better applications for gaming and augmented reality.

Microsoft has said it is confident it can have the software on new phones and available as an upgrade for existing models this year, despite glitches with its first couple of software updates.

Nokia, meanwhile, wants to make this awkward transition time as short as it can, and also reduce the amount of time between committing to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone operating system and actually having products to sell.

Getting the contract signed was a milestone, but Oistamo said he is even more pleased with the technical work that has taken place in the past 60 days–including getting the first Nokia hardware running Microsoft’s operating system.

“A contract is just a contract,” he said during the joint interview with Lees. “The real thing is about creating something jointly together.”

Already, throughout the halls of Nokia offices worldwide, workers can be seen sporting Windows Phones alongside their existing Nokia devices. And some of them have working prototypes of Nokia hardware running early test versions of the next Windows Phone software.

Nokia has even posted some teaser concept photos on its Web site.

“The products are not done yet,” Oistamo said. “But you can already see the signs. Everything that we talked conceptually with you in London is actually coming into real fruition.”

Although the contract largely formalizes the same structure envisioned when the two companies announced the partnership in February, Oistamo said there have been some minor changes, as well as more details on how the partnership will extend beyond phones.

Microsoft, for example, plans to adopt Nokia’s mapping technology broadly beyond its phone business, while Nokia will use Microsoft’s Bing search engine on even non-Windows Phones.

As for the financials, Lees and Oistamo didn’t have much new to say, but reiterated Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s assertion that the deal calls for billions of dollars to flow back and forth over the next few years.

Although Nokia doesn’t expect significant volumes of Windows Phone shipments until next year–and indeed will be making Symbian phones for some time to come–Elop has said that he wants the first Nokia device with Windows Phone on the market this year. And, while not offering any new details, Oistamo confirmed that those expectations haven’t changed.

“The preference and the ambition has definitely not changed, the sooner the better,” Oistamo said.

Doing so, though, means that the first Nokia smartphones running Microsoft’s software may not have as much distinctiveness as the company hopes to add over time.

“We are jumping into a moving train,” Oistamo said. “You can do more when you have a little bit more time.”

That said, even the first Nokia products running Windows Phone “are going to be very distinctly Nokia.”

Over time, Nokia hopes to bring a lot of its capabilities to both help Windows Phone as a platform and to make its Windows Phones stand out from the pack. Lees cited mapping as an area where Nokia will help the platform as a whole and imaging as an area where Nokia will try to differentiate itself from LG, Samsung, HTC and other phone makers developing Windows Phones. Even there, though, Microsoft had to do some work, noting that currently Windows Phone doesn’t give Nokia or any other hardware maker the access needed to truly stand out.

“Our platform is not fully optimized for that,” Lees said. “We need to make changes.”

Microsoft, for its part, is happy to have a partner as big as Nokia as it looks to better compete with Google and Apple in the smartphone battle. Lees noted that Nokia’s carrier billing relationships will mean that the company can sell apps even to those that don’t have a credit card, while its mapping prowess will make the phones more powerful in more countries.

“In the case of mapping, Nokia has far and away the largest global footprint,” Lees said. “Our mapping just got better everywhere around the world.”

“Verifying Google’s data snare is crucial to assessing a penalty and assuring no repeat. Consumers and businesses expect and deserve a full explanation, as well as measures shielding them from future spying. We will scrupulously safeguard the confidentiality of information we review.

“We will fight to compel Google to come clean–granting my office access to improperly collected materials and protecting confidentiality, as the company has done in Canada and elsewhere.”

– Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal Dec. 10, 2010

Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen has reassessed the need to review the consumer data inadvertently harvested by Google’s Street View cars and determined that it’s not quite as crucial as his predecessor claimed.

Jepsen said Friday that his office will enter into settlement negotiations with the company without reviewing the pilfered data, which Google has steadfastly refused to share with it. Under the terms of the deal between the two, Connecticut will drop the civil investigative demand it was using to force Google to produce the data at issue here, and Google will stipulate to collecting and storing it. It will also stipulate that the data collected included confidential and private information like “partial or complete e-mail communications.”

“This is a good result for the people of Connecticut,” Jepsen said in a statement. “The stipulation means we can proceed to negotiate a settlement of the critical privacy issues implicated here without the need for a protracted and costly fight in the courts, although we are ready to do so if we are unable to come to a satisfactory agreement through negotiation.”

PREVIOUSLY

• Well, Hell, If I Knew All I Had to Do Was Seize the Hard Drives…
• Look, Sergey, a Christmas Card From the Connecticut AG! Wait…
• Google Street View Privacy Debacle Far From Over
• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

According to South Korea’s Cyber Terror Response Center, the hard drives it seized from Google’s Seoul office last August contained a smorgasbord of consumer data. “We unlocked 79 computer hard disks seized from Google Korea last summer and discovered e-mails, instant messages and other private data sent over Wi-Fi networks,” Response Center official Jung Suk-hwa told the Korea Times. “We are now working on an additional 145 hard drives, which were handed over to us later. These disks had previously been taken out of the country.”

But whether those drives hold similar information or not, it’s already clear that Google violated South Korea’s law protecting telecommunications privacy. That said, it’s not immediately clear if the company will face a penalty for that. “We are looking to penalize whoever ordered and developed the program, but are unsure as of yet who that might be,” a police official told the Korea Herald. “Even after we confirm the identity of the suspect, we believe it will most likely be a U.S. citizen, and it is unclear whether the Korean Police Agency can prosecute those involved.”

An interesting remark, since Google has so far refused to identify the “rogue engineer” responsible for this whole Wi-Spy debacle. Perhaps if South Korea is able to do this, he or she can clarify things and confirm the veracity of Google’s explanation.

Google, for its part, trotted out yet another version of the same apologetic statement it’s issued in the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Britain….

“We are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks. As soon as we realised what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities. We have been co-operating with the Korean Communications Commission and the police, and will continue to do so. Our ultimate objective remains to delete the data consistent with our legal obligations and in consultation with the appropriate authorities.”

PREVIOUSLY

• Look, Sergey, a Christmas Card From the Connecticut AG! Wait…
• Google Street View Privacy Debacle Far From Over
• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

As major Web players look to make a play in local, Groupon and Foursquare have both walked away from lucrative acquisition deals.

But now, as these young start-ups go it alone, would it make sense for the two to combine their forces and become the next major Web powerhouse?

The joint company would have an enviable head start on all things local and social, a combination current leaders Google and Facebook have yet to crack.

To be clear, it’s just a scenario. But in case any investment bankers out there are left without a new project after these acquisition talks fell apart, here’s something to explore.

Groupon has a working business model, local merchant relationships and an ample waitlist, and a salesforce numbering in the thousands.

Meanwhile, Foursquare represents the areas where Groupon needs to grow. Foursquare has innovated around GPS and the mobile application experience, which is obviously where local is headed. Foursquare also has insight into incentivizing users to connect to merchants and each other on a daily basis rather than for a one-time deal. It could provide the tools to help users and merchants have a lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.

Put more simply, Groupon excels at recruiting customers, while Foursquare’s emerging strength is loyalty and retention.

Still, Groupon currently has far more value than Foursquare, so a merger of equals is unrealistic. Groupon has more than 20 million subscribers and a $2 billion revenue run rate. Before Groupon walked away from recent talks, Google wanted to buy the company for $6 billion, an almost unimaginable valuation for a two-year-old company.

Foursquare, which was courted by Facebook and Yahoo before taking funding from Andreessen Horowitz, has five million users and its own experience striking merchant deals and branding relationships, if on a much smaller scale. For years now co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley has been passionate about social location-sharing and multiple start-ups, and is still waiting for, and provoking, the market to catch up to his vision of mapping people’s real-world experiences.

At the very least, a Foursquare-Groupon partnership seems likely. Speaking about Groupon at our recent D: Dive Into Mobile event in San Francisco, Crowley said, “There are lessons we can learn from them and ways we can work together.”

He elaborated, as you can see below in a video of the interview: “We could easily pull Groupon deals into Foursquare and make them sweeter based on the stats behind them.”

Crowley also seems less fierce about staying independent than Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, having reiterated at D: Dive that what matters most to him is to see his products built and used.

In addition to ample doses of irreverence and floppy hairdos, the two CEOs have in common the outside-of-Silicon-Valley factor. Foursquare is the pride of New York, while Groupon is Chicago’s most influential Internet start-up ever.

Put together, perhaps the pair could take on those geeky Californians and show everyone how social commerce is really done.

So, Fourpon? Groupsquare? What do you think?

“We need to verify what confidential information the company surreptitiously and wrongfully collected and stored,” Blumenthal said in a statement, adding that doing so is “crucial to assessing a penalty and assuring no repeat.”

Though Google has already shared some of the data with other regulatory authorities, it evidently sees little need for such verification and clearly has no intention of handing any data over to Blumenthal’s office.

“As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks,” the company said in a statement rehashing the endless string of similar statements that preceded it. “As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all WiFi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities. We did not want and have never used the payload data in any of our products and services. We want to delete this data as soon as possible and will continue to work with the authorities to determine the best way forward, as well as to answer their further questions and concerns.”

Google has until Dec. 17 to give Blumenthal’s office access to the data. Or else…

PREVIOUSLY

• Google Street View Privacy Debacle Far From Over
• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

[Image credit: Someecards]

In a letter to the House Oversight Committee, The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) called for further investigation of the breach, suggesting that the FTC may have let Google off easy because of the company’s close ties to the Obama administration.

“Like Halliburton in the previous administration, Google has an exceptionally close relationship with the current administration,” the letter says, noting former Googler Andrew McLaughlin’s new gig as U.S. deputy chief technology officer and President Obama’s recent appearance at a Democratic fundraiser held by Google exec Marissa Mayer. “The FTC’s decision to close its investigation into Google’s unauthorized gathering of private data through its Google Street View program is troubling enough. But looked at in the context of this administration’s extraordinarily close relationship with Google, no fair-minded person could look at the record so far and not believe that further investigation is warranted.”

Maybe, maybe not. That Halliburton quip sure does sting though, given Google Senior Competition Counsel Dana Wagner’s infamous comments about the company last summer. “There are a lot of companies in which I wouldn’t do this job, right?” he said at the time. “I spent seven years in the government. I very much believe in the message and the mission of the Justice Department. I would not be doing this at Halliburton, right?…The sense that I get is that their corporate values may be a little different from Google’s, on some things.”

Incidentally, the NLPC may get its wish–Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) last week told C-SPAN he plans to investigate the Google Street View privacy breach if he becomes chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

PREVIOUSLY

• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

Google earlier this year said that the camera-equipped cars it uses to mark the location of wireless networks and take pictures for its Street View service had for years inadvertently collected data from publicly accessible wireless networks. Google initially said that no significant personal data was collected, but last month admitted that emails and passwords had also been copied.

On Wednesday, U.K. Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, the regulator in charge of data protection, issued a statement saying that, as a result of the “significant breach” of law, his office would audit Google’s data-protection practices in the U.K. and ask the Mountain View, Calif., company to sign an official commitment affirming that such breaches wouldn’t occur again. The U.K. regulator had earlier found that Google didn’t collect meaningful personal details.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“…We note that Google has recently announced improvements to its internal processes to address some of the concerns raised above, including appointing a director of privacy for engineering and product management; adding core privacy training for key employees; and incorporating a formal privacy review process into the design phases of new initiatives,” David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a letter to Google’s attorney. “The company also publicly stated its intention to delete the inadvertently collected payload data as soon as possible. Further, Google has made assurances to the FTC that the company has not used and will not use any of the payload data collected in any Google product or service, now or in the future. This assurance is critical to mitigate the potential harm to consumers from the collection of payload data. Because of these commitments, we are ending our inquiry into this matter at this time.”

Looks like Google won’t face any fines for the incident in the U.S., though it’s still subject to investigations abroad.

PREVIOUSLY

• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

Microsoft is holding yet another feature update event for its Bing search service later today at its Silicon Valley HQ.

Microsoft (MSFT) Online Services Division President Qi Lu will be there, as well as SVP Yusuf Mehdi, for–according to the invite–”a conversation about new directions and future opportunities of search and a demonstration of some new search innovation by Bing.”

Those two are the big guns at Bing, so this won’t be a minor update.

As has been widely reported, a lot will be about its continuing integration with Facebook data, which BoomTown scooped out last year.

Big giant and sustained yawn, since it is a year gone and everyone is doing this in some fashion, including Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

Unless, of course, it is executed in some distinct and unusual manner.

Maybe a search of Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s data, every time yours is displayed without explicit permission?

We can dream!

I am hoping, as before, there is some kind of mapping update, since Bing often shows some cool new stuff at these regular events.

And I’ll be asking about how the Yahoo search and online advertising partnership is going, natch.

Liveblogging and possible video attack to begin at 11:30 am PT. (Note to Microsoft minions: Donuts, not cream puffs.)

BoomTown was sitting front row center–better to scare Google Mobile Product Manager Hugo Barra–at the Silicon Valley search giant’s press event in San Francisco this morning.

Google (GOOG) called together a group of reporters to discuss some “cool new features” for its Android operating system.

While many have been expectantly waiting for Google to announce a video-calling offering, to match the Apple (AAPL) FaceTime service, that was not to be here.

Instead, it was a low-key rollout of a few whiz-bang features to ooh and ahh at.

Happily, Google provided unusually delicious donuts, which was my entire reason for coming, because donuts are the pastry to the gods.

Let’s get to it:

10:05 am PT: PR dude Mike Nelson introed Barra, who said there will be two new features announced.

Ooh and Ahh.

First though, we were forced to endure yet another lecture on how important mobile is and where the future is headed that comes from every single company that throws a mobile event.

Mobile is the big show now?

Really? We had no idea this cell phone thing was going to take off! Thanks, Professor Barra!

Barra pressed on with lots of talk about MIPS (millions of instructions per second, which you should care less about, but is important).

Barra said that innovative smartphones were becoming “super-computers in your pocket.”

Again, master of the obvious!

I obviously needed to have a bite of my lovely sprinkle-laden donut to gain some balance.

10:12 am: Barra moved onto voice recognition. He asked the phone movie times in Palo Alto, Calif. and how high the Empire State Building, results which were promptly delivered.

(When my kid asked me on a trip to New York, I just said it was a badillion feet high, which also worked as an answer.)

But such technology is cool, for sure.

But Barra upped the ante by speaking four languages–Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese–to get results. It worked! Get this guy on “The Amazing Race” pronto!

Now, tricks over, it was onto the first product announcement!

And, drum roll…it was a new feature that Google is a calling “Voice Actions” in Voice Search, available today for Android 2.2 Froyo devices.

This sounded like a band name from the 1980s.

Instead, it is the ability to speak into the phone and have it instantly do things, such as sending text messages, automatic dialing and mapping and more, all via speech commands in English.

Speech recognition, natural language processing and semantic Web search–you could kind of do this before on Android, but it was neither seamless nor automatic, said Barra.

He did not say, but Voice Actions is an awful lot like Siri, the mobile app assistant start-up that Apple bought recently.

But there were more on Voice Actions, according to the adorkable demo dude Mike LeBeau, a baker’s dozen (13!) of actions, and there will be more.

He spoke into the phone a request to “Listen to the Decembrists.” Presto (and also props for the hip musical choice)!

Then, LeBeau spoke an email about some scuba diving trip. Presto!

But then he added a smiley face! Unfortunate and decidedly unhip, but presto!

After that, LeBeau kept showing off, setting the alarm clock, going to Wikipedia, doing a search for art galleries in Amsterdam.

10:28 am: Now for product announcement #2.

Barra brought up engineering manager Dave Burke, who built it in his 20 percent time.

It’s a synching feature called “Chrome to Phone.”

This sounded like a 1990s band name.

“It is a low latency way to push information to the phone,” said Burke, using Google’s browser and an app for the mobile device.

There is a little icon on the Chrome browser you click that sends a variety of stuff to the app on an Android phone.

It’s certainly helpful.

10:35 am: Onto Q&A about the two perfectly fine, though hardly earth-shaking, announcements.

Questions about the languages, bookmarking Chrome to Phone (not yet) and what’s coming next.

More!

It was all about solving “pain points” said the Voice Actions dude LeBeau.

All I know is donuts are the only thing that solves my pain points. Presto!

(And here is a post of some videos and screenshots of both Voice Actions and Chrome to Phone to enjoy.)

That’s because it shows a Hanvon slate, using the Microsoft (MSFT) Windows 7 operating system, being put through its paces–email, video, browsing, mapping–against an Apple (AAPL) iPad.

Let the innovation games being, but I personally think they are both winners!

Enjoy:

As BoomTown reported earlier today, Yahoo Japan confirmed it would switch its search technology and paid search provider to Google from Yahoo.

The move is a definite blow to Yahoo’s new search and advertising alliance with Microsoft (MSFT), although Yahoo (YHOO) sought to minimize the damage in a statement (which you can read below in its entirety).

But make no mistake, given the huge Japanese market: It’s Googzilla totally wiping the floor with MicroHooSoftra.

While it might seem unusual that Yahoo Japan will be using Google’s search, the company is not actually owned by Yahoo, which holds a 35 percent stake.

SoftBank Corp., the giant Japan-based Internet service provider and cell phone provider, has a stake of around 40 percent in Yahoo Japan.

Both SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son–one of the first key investors in Yahoo–and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang sit on the board of Yahoo Japan, which is operated independently as a separate publicly traded company run by President and CEO Masahiro Inoue.

Now that Yahoo Japan and Google (GOOG) have announced their engagement–in a statement at the time of Yahoo Japan’s first-quarter earnings announcement–it is certain that Microsoft will move to stop deal from gaining regulatory approval in Japan, even though a Google spokesman told BoomTown it had already consulted the proper authorities in Japan and had gotten no objections.

Still, I would not expect Microsoft to settle for that, and it is likely to do some lobbying
much as it did successfully when Google tried to enter into a similar deal with Yahoo itself in the U.S. in 2008.

That deal failed after government opposition to the creation of a near-monopoly in search in the U.S. became clear.

In Japan the combination is even worse, with the pair controlling almost the entire market share of search there, both paid and algorithmic.

In search query volume, according to one recent report, Yahoo Japan currently has just over a 53 percent share of the search market and Google has just over 38 percent.

Other polls differ, but it all spells an overwhelming and definite monopoly when combined.

Coincidentally, Bing just entered the Japan market with its branded search, but it has only a small share there of almost three percent.

The same market share among the big players holds in paid search too, with Yahoo Japan and Google controlling almost the whole thing between them.

Maintaining a modicum of competition in Japan was Yahoo’s to lose. And lose it did.

After Yahoo and Microsoft struck their wide-ranging search and online advertising partnership last year, Yahoo Japan–which now uses Yahoo technology for algorithmic and paid search–was then free to pick whatever search service it wanted.

Most expected it to use Microsoft’s Bing technology, which will be powering Yahoo in the U.S. by the end of the year, as well as in many other countries where Yahoo operates.

But, because Yahoo Japan is its own entity, any such deal needed to be negotiated among the parties, putting Yahoo Japan in play, much as if it were AOL (AOL) or News Corp. (NWS) unit MySpace in the U.S.

Investors are sure to ask what Yahoo management was doing as the Google effort took shape.

Those efforts obviously paid off, despite a declaration by Yahoo Japan’s Inoue in an January interview with a Japanese news organization that he was not impressed with some other Google services, such as its Street View mapping service.

Thus, the fallout from this is likely to be tough on Yahoo and also its nascent search relationship with Microsoft.

Yahoo Japan said the date of the switch was yet to be determined.

Here’s the statement from Yahoo on the changeover:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

UPDATE: Responding to a request for comment, Apple (AAPL) gave its standard non-denial for deals like these: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.”

After BoomTown complained at December’s search summit held by Bing about the lack of the finest pastry known to man–namely, donuts!–minions were dispatched by top Microsoft geek general Satya Nadella to fix the dire situation.

And, happily, at Search Summit 2010, there on the lovely snack table were a small pile of them–which looked like Krispy Kreme to me.

There were lacking the key sprinkles feature, but carb crisis averted!

Speaking of features, top Bing execs were on hand in San Francisco to show off all the work they have been doing over the last year in the software giant’s efforts to topple mean old Google (GOOG) via an innovative offering.

Even the plain-speaking Nadella acknowledged in his opening it was still a bit of a children’s crusade, since Bing had barely broken into double digits in search market share and Google was hovering around 70 percent.

But the most recent report released this week by comScore (SCOR) showed continued promise, so Microsoft (MSFT) presses on its long and pricey road!

Here’s my liveblog of this morning’s event at the software giant’s San Francisco office:

10 am PT: Nadella opened with the donuts news. Nice move.

Then, it was onto some promising stats of growth, which have surely been promising, despite the high price tag (Microsoft’s online division lost $700 million in the last quarter, to give you an idea of the sticker shock).

Still, as search exec Brian MacDonald said, as he was presenting all the many new features–such as cards–added over the last year: “We’re in it to win it.”

At the end of his presentation, in a slide title “Future,” he said reporters could not take pictures or video. Sure, hop us up on sugar and then tell us something interesting and bar us from taking snaps!

But MacDonald clicked through the images so fast, it was hard to tell what Bing would be up to. Essentially, it looks like a more blocky, image-heavy design, with more differing fonts and contextual info.

10:40 am PT: A smart search geek Harry Shum was then on with a lecture about search intent and all kinds of insider tweakery that made me confused, since I do not understand terms such as “page-level dialog.” There is also apparently “session-level dialog.”

Harry knows what it all means, which is pretty much all that counts.

My take: It has to do with some sort of digital conversation Bing search dudes are having with the users that users have no idea is actually going on.

Simply put: They’re watching you.

11 am PT: Next search guy talked about search intent and such.

That means adding features such as a link to search history or instant weather on the opening page. It’s the little touches that count.

In fact, they do, as Bing tries to differentiate itself from what Google offers, via a series of neat tricks and clever design.

That includes, for example, easy access to lyrics and song classifiers, when searching in music.

Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” was used as an example, since Lady Gaga seems to be the go-to gal on seeming cool these days.

(But is it time to check Bing search trends to see if she is peaked?)

11:19 am: Next, top Online Services Division exec Erik Jorgensen came on to discuss mobile and mapping. He compared himself with “Edward Scissorhands” when talking about how hard it is to have a good experience on a small device.

“Type less, do more,” is the internal mantra at Bing, he said. Coincidentally, my mantra is type more, do less.

Jorgensen showed off Bing mobile stats: 23 million users, 160 percent growth and four million downloads of its iPhone app. Yes, it has come to this–Microsoft using Apple (AAPL) to tout its success.

Then it was onto mapping, which is a pretty good arena for Bing. Stats: 41 percent growth in U.S. unique users, 43 percent rise in searches using enhanced maps, a huge boost in map apps.

11:29 am: Bing Maps guru Blaise Aguera y Arcas–who has the single most sexy name in all of geekdom–said the focus is now on social location.

As in Foursquare!

In fact, he showed off a map in which Foursquare check-ins pour in and pop up in a bit of a freaky way, as in: You can stalk in real-time.

Then it was onto cool mapping eye-candy, which I always fall for since the whole zoom-in-zoom-out thing is mesmerizing. Aguera y Arcas showed off clickable geographic names and embedded maps within maps from, in this case, a zoo or a museum.

11:50 am: Q&A Time!

The first question is about gaming. It’s hot said Nadella, and Bing wants to provide discovery and search more than games themselves.

I asked a question about the status of the Yahoo (YHOO) search partnership deal, which is in process. It is a very complex process, in fact.

And, though they were supposed to be in tandem, Nadella said that algorithm would move faster than advertising technology handover.

“If there were a drop of of advertisers [due to the new deal], that would be problematic,” he said.

Yes, which segued into the next obvious topic: When would Bing make some dough?

Thus. I asked about the high costs of competing in the search space, which Nadella said would continue, including distribution deals and in the aggressive marketing of Bing.

“For sure, we had to ante up,” he said. “But the product has to be able to stand on its own…ultimately, the product has to carry the day.”

More questions about distribution, social search, churn, product differentiation and whether Bing is growing from a more passive user to building a “fan base.”

BoomTown brainstorm: If they handed out delicious donuts with each search, I’d leave Google in a New York minute.

But, like a skunk at a garden party, I asked another question about when Bing is going to break even.

Nadella was too smart to answer this digital hot potato.

“It’s a big market where money can we made, and we are making progress,” he said, saying I should ask his bosses about specifics.

I shall!

In this vein, someone then asked a question about whether Bing would ever become a verb as Google has become.

Shum joked that in the future six letters would be too many for people to say, so things were looking up for four-letter search brands!

More questions included whether Google was tweaked by Bing yet (yep!), and whether Bing should try to win in an international market to show some muscle (U.S. is still top focus).

Finally, it was “time to deploy the cream puffs,” said a Microsoft PR honcho.

Long past time, I’d say.

Correcting yet another too-early rumor, sources tell BoomTown that–as has been previously reported many times in many places–Microsoft and Apple are in long-term talks about adding the Bing search service as a prominent option on the iPhone and not as a replacement of Google.

Currently, Google (GOOG) is the default search on the popular mobile device, although you can easily go into its settings and switch the search option to Yahoo (YHOO). Few consumers do, though.

Microsoft (MSFT) has been angling to be added to the search options for a long time, but has wanted to do so in a way that makes the choice more visible.

And it is probably a good idea to give users of the iPhone more choice in a wide range of services.

But, whether Apple would make Microsoft’s Bing the default or whether it would simply allow iPhone users more of a choice among search services is unclear.

In addition, Microsoft wants to make its Bing mapping more integrated with the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

“Being an option is what’s on the table,” said one source briefed on the talks. “That’s all for now, although who knows where it could lead?”

But, cautioned several sources, talks are not complete, even though the software giant is eager to be able to announce such a deal at Apple’s upcoming developers conference on June 7.

Microsoft execs have been nervous about completing such a deal, especially because Apple is notoriously secretive and is known to end talks due to leaks.

That said, relations between Apple and Google have become increasingly tense, as their product offerings–especially in the mobile arena–have become competitive.

Google was one of Apple’s principal partners on the iPhone upon its launch and its services are prominent on the device.

But, as the device has evolved, sources say Apple has been considering a number of search options, as well as mapping, for the iPhone.

Google execs have been anticipating this, of course, especially as the search giant has pushed development of its Android mobile operating system.

In fact, a recent developers conference that Google had in San Francisco, its top execs spent a lot of time publicly attacking Apple.

Thus, it is likely that its top-level placement on the iPhone and other Apple products will diminish.

While being an option is not the same as completely replacing Google, it would give Bing a well-known platform to show off its technology to consumers.

Microsoft would like to hip-check Google off of the iPhone, of course.

But like rumors that it would pay News Corp. (NWS) to “de-index” its content from Google and display it prominently on Bing, the notion is premature.

In one of the more interesting battlefields of the multifront war between Google and Microsoft, Bing Maps today added what it calls its “largest imagery update to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery.”

That includes the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the United States where there is existing black-and-white imagery, as well as bird’s-eye imagery for Sweden.

The ongoing innovations to online mapping by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have been a boon to consumers, who are getting increasingly cool and substantive looks at our world.

In February, Microsoft debuted a series of eye-candy features in its ongoing one-upmanship with Google with a new series of enhancements to its spatial search offerings.

Coolest new ones from Microsoft: Indoor panoramas to move mapping inside and real-time video overlays to maps.

Google Maps is also not resting, adding a series of features over the last months from Google Goggles (which takes pictures of an object or location and then identifies it via search) to spoken, turn-by-turn directions on its Android-powered smartphones.

I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next from these archrivals.

Here’s Microsoft’s blog on the improvements:

March 05, 2010, 09:00 AM by Chris Pendleton

Last month we pushed out our largest amount of new imagery EVER in terms of square kilometers. This month, we’re blowing THAT record out of the water. You thought 1 million+ sq. km. was large? How about 6.7 million square kilometers! It’s pretty much unfathomable. The big winners? Aerial: The Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where we had black and white imagery. Bird’s Eye: Sweden. Deets:

Aerial

Australia 524,645 sq. km.
Botswana 61,433 sq. km.
Estonia 618 sq. km.
Hungary 3,369 sq. km.
Mexico 236,624 sq. km.
Morocco 13,303 sq. km.
Namibia 72,162 sq. km.
New Zealand 14,987 sq. km.
Poland 6,254 sq. km.
Romania 3,695 sq. km.
Russian Federation 553,244 sq. km.
South Africa 123,138 sq. km.
Turkey 16,148 sq. km.
United Kingdom 15,221 sq. km.
United States 4,961,758 sq. km.

Oblique (Bird’s Eye)

Austria 238 sq. km.
Belgium 898 sq. km.
Denmark 718 sq. km.
Finland 1,634 sq. km.
France 2,001 sq. km.
Greece 931 sq. km.
Ireland 1,340 sq. km.
Netherlands 1,709 sq. km.
Norway 2,425 sq. km.
Portugal 2,184 sq. km.
Romania 1,534 sq. km.
Spain 5,143 sq. km.
Sweden 6,747 sq. km.
Switzerland 424 sq. km.
United Kingdom 13,094 sq. km.
United States 56,007 sq. km.

Check out the Bing Maps World Tour for visuals. Also, Johannes has a sweet application for viewing imagery based on shape files. Niiiice.

CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton

Well, BoomTown did not expect Microsoft to toss fish and bench-press crabs during its demo today at the TED conference, but that’s just what it did.

Debuting a series of eye-candy features in its ongoing oneupmanship with Google (GOOG) in the increasingly competitive mapping arena, Bing Maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas unveiled a new series of enhancements to its spatial search offerings, some of which are available today.

I am not sure which tech giant is going to prevail in the online mapping battle, but it is certain that consumers will be enjoying some innovative advances over the next few years.

Coolest new ones from Microsoft: Indoor panoramas to move mapping inside and real-time video overlays to maps.

In the demo, a Microsoft (MSFT) team was at the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle showing off some fish-tossing and giant crabs there back to Long Beach, Calif., in real time as Aguera y Arcas showed off the feature.

Here’s a quick summary of what Microsoft demonstrated:

Streetside Photos application (in technology preview): Available today, this tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to the Streetside imagery in Bing Maps. As more people contribute and share imagery, we can reunite those photos with the location where they were taken. This application will also enable the layering of historical imagery, so people can go back in time and see a location as it existed decades prior.

World Wide Telescope Integration: We’re not just stopping at the street, and are excited to announce our vision for the initial integration with the World Wide Telescope, a project out of Microsoft Research. Once launched, you will literally be able to
“walk” outside in Streetside mode, look up, and see what’s above–way above, with constellations coming to life.

Indoor Panoramas: At the same time as we’re getting more “universal” with World Wide Telescope, we’re also getting more intimate. Today, we’re showing the first results of our indoor panoramas work. This will provide an experience identical to Streetside, but won’t be limited to places you can take a vehicle. Whether you’re exploring Seattle’s Pike Place Market, or your favorite theme park, Bing Maps will give you the most immersive experience of the place.

Video Overlay Technology: Today, Blaise also demonstrated a preview of our new video overlay technology, which enables real-time video to be overlaid seamlessly on street-level imagery, adding another dimension to the mapping experience. In the coming year, we think you will be pleasantly surprised with how far Bing takes this new technology. Stay tuned.

And here is a video demo of Streetside Photo application and WorldWide Telescope integration, but not indoor panoramas and video overlay technology:

This morning, Microsoft (MSFT) showed off some new features of Bing and reviewed how the search service has been doing since its launch.

Here are the slides that the company’s top search execs used in the presentation, which included not much new stuff, except for a cool update to its mapping and getting third-party developers to do “mash-ins.”

Unfortunately, the demos were live, but enjoy the PowerPoint, which shows Bing’s roadmap so far (click on the link to launch):

12 02 09 Nadella Fall Launch Final –

It’s well known that Google doesn’t do much in the way of marketing around its search service.

While you will catch advertising for the Chrome browser or for Android smartphones on the Web, given Google’s huge 70 percent market share in search, it hardly needs to attract users.

So, then, what is one to make of a series of new videos, which look suspiciously like commercials, that Google (GOOG) launched late last week on its blog and posted on a new channel on YouTube?

Called “Search Stories,” there are a half-dozen of the short videos, some more adorkable than others, which star the main search box.

One thing they have in common is that they have the look and feel of a marketing campaign, with the tag line “Search on.”

They also stress a variety of Google products, such as mapping, video, price comparisons, email and more.

One imagines what pre-Batman Bruce Wayne would look for, complete with ominous music, including search terms such as “coping with loss,” “flexible kevlar” and “gotham city crime statistics.”

Another video, called “Newbie,” has a grandmother searching on “keeping in touch with grandkids” and–in a clever dig at the MySpace and Facebook social networking services–“what is myfacebook,” which gets corrected by Google to “what is facebook.”

Could it be that the $100 million marketing push Microsoft (MSFT) launched for its Bing search service, which seems to be slowly gaining share, is starting to get on the nerves of those Spocks in Silicon Valley?

Not that Google would admit this, instead simply saying it was feeling all warm and fuzzy and so decided to make some kids-let’s-put-on-a-show videos.

Wrote Robert Wong of Google Creative Lab in a blog post, in part:

Because while we’re proud of the innovations we’re making in search, we’re proudest of the things people use search to accomplish. In other words, the best search results don’t show up on a webpage–they show up in somebody’s life.

So in that spirit, we made a bunch of videos. There’s one about grandma dipping her toe into technology. One about friends taking a Kerouac inspired road trip. And yes, there’s even one about Bruce Wayne.

Judge for yourself–here they all are:

Parisian Love

Mad to Live

Batman

Newbie

Potholes

High School

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.