And while Warner, and the rest of the industry, had been hoping that Google might launch a music service that would give sales a boost this year, that doesn’t look likely. The new hope: Google arrives sometime next year.

That’s the line from Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. during his company’s earnings call this morning. Bronfman said he’s hoping that Google and other services “will come online in calendar 2011,” and that they’ll create “very significant opportunity both for consumers and the music industry.”

Any more detail than that? Nope.

But Bronfman did have a few nice things to say about Spotify, the much-hyped music service that has yet to launch in the U.S. Warner has renewed its European licensing deal with the service, which offers both free and subscription options, and Bronfman murmured some hopeful things about getting something done in America.

In Europe, the new Spotify deal “was a long time coming, [and] was not easy for us, and not easy for them,” Bronfman said, and says he’s “hopeful” the two companies can reach an agreement.

As I’ve previously reported, music sources say that Spotify and Sony have essentially reached an agreement for a U.S. launch. And the consensus seems to be that the service is close to getting something done with Universal Music Group, the world’s largest label.

So the question for Spotify is whether it needs to get Warner on board before it can launch in the U.S., something it continues to insist it wants to do this year.

Spotify officials have previously said that they’d only go forward with three of the big four labels on board, which makes sense–no point in launching a service that doesn’t have lots of the music people want to hear.

On the other hand, if the Spotify guys wait to get Warner–or EMI Music Group, the other major label–on board before launching, they could get held up for quite some time.

Speaking of EMI Music, what does Bronfman think of the label’s deal with Apple that brought the Beatles to iTunes? He thinks what most of you think: “I don’t know how impactful, after 10 or 12 years of digital business, their coming to iTunes will be,” he said.

But it does give Apple the ability to run a very cool marketing campaign, and that will get more people into iTunes. And that’s good for Warner–and everyone else who sells stuff there.

*You really can’t stress this point enough: We’re a decade past Napster, but the music industry still runs on CD sales. In Warner’s case, digital now accounts for 25 percent of overall revenue.

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

Guardian Media has one for sale. The British publisher is peddling the “Inside.com” domain name, people familiar with the company tell me. Asking price, I’m told, is something north of $100,000.

If that name rings a bell, it’s probably because you used to dine on big, well-prepared plates of media-covering-media during the first boom, when Inside.com spent a lot of money trying to create an industry insider/outsider publishing business.

That didn’t work, and eventually paidContent’s Rafat Ali, an Inside.com veteran himself, bought up the domain in 2008.

The idea was to use the name as an umbrella for his collection of trade sites, and perhaps to help Ali open up a Hollywood outpost. But that never panned out, and if you head to Inside.com now it will direct you to paidContent.

Ali ended up selling that site and its parent company to Guardian Media in 2008, and left two years later. The British company once had aggressive plans to expand in the U.S., but it’s unclear what it intends to do now. Caroline Little, who was running American operations for the publisher, stepped down earlier this year.

I’ve asked Guardian for comment and will update if it has one.

Now, on to real news: There is no official news about the streaming music service’s attempt to land on U.S. shores. Spotify has yet to land a single U.S. label deal, even though it continues to insist that it will get things settled in time for a 2010 launch.

But the company has made progress with the labels in recent weeks, according to multiple sources. That’s in part because it is now willing to hand over real money, either in the form of advances or as guarantees spread throughout the life of a multiple-year contract.

How much money? Depends on who you talk to: One source thinks Spotify is now offering “tens of millions” to the labels to get a U.S. deal done; another person familiar with negotiations thinks Spotify will eventually end up spending $100 million to get the big four labels–or at least three of them–in line for a launch.

But money alone won’t get Spotify into the U.S. Or put another way: The amount of money will depend in part on the real sticking point in the negotiations–the amount of free music that Spotify users can listen to before they need to become paying subscribers.

In Europe, where Spotify has been a very big success, listeners can stream an unlimited amount of music, on demand, without ever paying a cent. But in the U.S., rival streaming services like Rhapsody, MOG and Napster generally only offer a very brief trial period of a few days before requiring that a pay wall go up.

For the past two years, Spotify has insisted that free, unlimited streaming is the only way the service will work, because that’s Spotify’s most effective marketing technique. Subscribers who do pay up get benefits like ad-free music, and the ability to port their songs to mobile devices like iPhones.

But the labels, most notably Warner Music Group, have insisted that unlimited free streams only serve to strip away their product’s remaining value–if you can listen for free on Spotify, why would you ever buy another CD or iTunes single?

“[Spotify executives] are perennially underestimating label resistance to the free stuff,” says an industry source familiar with the discussions. “And it seems the checks are either not big enough or the labels really won’t give on free.”

Until that gap gets solved–either via compromise or cash–Spotify can’t come to the U.S.

The company had recently been discussing a mid-November launch date, but unless things move quickly, that can’t happen. And even people who are optimistic about the company’s chances concede it may not get it done in time for a pre-Christmas launch, which would force things back to 2011. Spotify declined to comment.

Among the four labels, Sony appears closest to a deal, sources say–a pact is “essentially signable,” according to one source, though another insists there is nothing “executable.” Sony declined to comment. In order to launch, though, Spotify will also need Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company, and either Warner or EMI Music Group.

As BoomTown reported yesterday, former News Corp. digital head Ross Levinsohn’s appointment as the head of Yahoo’s Americas division is imminent.

He will be in charge of Yahoo’s massive media and advertising units.

But–and this just cracks me up–he has not actually signed on the dotted line yet and, thus, Yahoo could not announce it early this afternoon, as planned.

According to sources, there were several issues between Levinsohn and Yahoo to settle. His staying in Los Angeles–and not being located at the company’s Sunnyvale HQ–was not among those last negotiating points.

But those issues seem settled now and sources at Yahoo are confident that Levinsohn will sign sometime today, and the Internet giant will announce the news soon after.

Then the real fun begins.

So stay tuned…

“…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

In fact, a lot of the real workers have been toiling away, and one new big result is that Microsoft’s adCenter is now officially powering 100 percent of paid search on the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s owned-and-operated properties and its publisher network in the U.S. and Canada.

According to the companies, that means marketers can now use one account for their search advertising campaigns across both the Microsoft Bing service and Yahoo.

Yahoo and Microsoft–which are attempting to combine their share of the search marketplace to better compete with behemoth Google via a partnership–have already completed algorithmic search integration.

In the U.S., that’s 163 million searchers on Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as 15 million searchers in Canada.

Thus, the pair are as tight as ticks–kind of like the JWoww and Snooki of search!

Time for a fist pump, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer!

“We’re very proud of this latest achievement with the search alliance which signifies a seminal step in Yahoo!’s search history,” said Chi-Chao Chang, Yahoo’s VP and GM for the global search business, in a statement. “Now that the back end work is done, Yahoo! will be able to focus on achieving the long-term goals of the alliance that will benefit consumers, advertisers and publishers alike.”

Hola Sofia Vergara!

In an interesting brand extension, the popular celebrity and entertainment site Wonderwall has launched a version aimed at the U.S. Hispanic market called Wonderwall Latino.

The main Wonderwall site, which is a partnership between Hollywood production company BermanBraun and Microsoft’s MSN portal that launched in early 2009, now has 11.3 million unique users and 337 million page views a month.

That site is getting a design overhaul, with new features including voting buttons, a dedicated video page and a buzz stream with breaking news and tweets, as well as apps for the Apple iPhone and IPod Touch.

According to an MSN blog on the Wonderwall extension, “BermanBraun will spearhead the design, programming, and operations of the digital brand. MSN will provide unique content and lead the advertising efforts in partnership with Microsoft and BermanBraun.”

BermanBraun also recently debuted a political site called BLTWY with MSNBC.com.

For the four weeks ended Oct. 2, 2010, Bing accounted for 10.10 percent of U.S. searches, up from 9.87 percent in August, while Yahoo accounted for 13.54 percent, down from 14.28 percent. Taken together, those two metrics mean that 23.64 percent of the U.S. search market is Bing-powered. That’s nearly a quarter of the market claimed during the first full month of Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo’s (YHOO) fledgling search partnership, which kicked into gear in mid-August when Microsoft’s Bing back end officially began handling Yahoo’s U.S. search results

Sadly, that’s less than the combined 24.2 percent the companies had last month (thanks, Yahoo!) and pales beside the 72.15 percent share controlled by rival Google (GOOG), which doesn’t seem to be suffering much at the hands of Bing-powered search at all. According to Hitwise, its share in August was 71.59 percent, which means it saw 1 percent month-over-month growth from August to September.