Greg Nelson, who has had the thankless job of running MSN for Microsoft, has left that position and been given the even more thankless task of running the integration of the complex search and online advertising partnership struck by the software giant and Yahoo.

Nelson's counterpart at Yahoo, according to sources, will be Mark Morrissey, who is currently SVP of Products at the Internet giant.

The pair--pictured above, with Morrissey on left, Nelson on right--will have their hands full in what will ultimately be a two-year effort.

BoomTown's title for the relationship: A Couple of White Geek Guys Sitting Around Arguing!

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While in Washington, D.C., BoomTown can't just visit the policy wonks from Internet companies, so I paid a visit to Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that works to promote privacy and protection online.

In other words, a professional--and much needed--thorn in the side of Facebook, Google and these days, MicroHoo.

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Yahoo and Microsoft are poised to finally sign the definitive agreement that will govern the complex and far-reaching search and online advertising partnership they struck in late July, said sources close to the situation.

If all goes well, the various Microsoft and Yahoo execs--who have been ferreted away over the last weeks, busy dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's in the massive document--could even turn in the delayed deal homework to their bosses for signature by the end of the week.

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In what should come as a shock to almost no one, the detailed negotiations to complete the Microsoft and Yahoo search and online advertising final agreement are more complicated than its authors anticipated and are taking longer than expected to complete.

Relax, folks--they'll get done.

But here's a more important thing that should wrap up sooner than later: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's gibes about former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang's tenure.

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Yesterday, BoomTown wrote about the status of the regulatory investigation for the Microsoft-Yahoo search and online advertising pact, which most expect to get approved.

One of the few vocal critics of the deal, though, is Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest group, who lobbed MicroHoo some important questions.

Here are the answers.

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Unlike the gripping back and forth of the fight over Yahoogle last year, the approval process for the search and online advertising partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo is chugging along slowly but surely as the Justice Department has deepened its investigation by reaching out to a broad range of publishers, advertisers, public interest groups and rivals for comment recently.

But, so far, there is still no significant external challenge to the MicroHoo deal, even from Google, the likeliest company to try to scuttle or, at the very least, slow down the deal.

In other words: Zzzzzzzzzzz...

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As BoomTown promised earlier today, here's the first of many filings related to the Yahoo-Microsoft online search and advertising deal announced last week.

The 8-K filing was made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A couple highlights: No termination fee and a $50 million annual payment to Yahoo by Microsoft for three years, for unspecified "transition and implementation costs" beyond the agreement.

(Personally, I think it's for extra Advil needed for the headaches engendered organizing this circus.)

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After all the investor hubbub over the oh-no-they-didn't deal between Yahoo and Microsoft starts to die down a bit, the pair are now embarking on the path that is the only way toward proving the efficacy of them joining together.

That would be getting a variety of state, federal and international regulators to say yes to the wide-ranging online advertising and search arrangement they announced last week so they can start making it work.

According to sources at both companies, a variety of filings will be made this week, including one to the Securities and Exchange Commission that should provide more details of the partnership.

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Meet Satya Nadella, the man in charge of search technology for the just-struck partnership with Yahoo.

How the search business of Microsoft evolves, improves and, most of all, out-innovates--especially in the face of heretofore withering competition from search behemoth Google--is going to be a big factor in the success of the deal with Yahoo.

In fact, Yahoo has essentially put its search technology eggs in Microsoft's work-in-progress basket, which must make a series of innovative leaps, or else.

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While at Microsoft HQ last week, right after the online advertising and search deal with Yahoo was struck, BoomTown interviewed a passel of Microsoft execs, including Online Audience Business SVP Yusuf Mehdi, who has been a key player in the many--and mostly disastrous--attempts that the software giant has made to form some sort of alliance with Yahoo over the years.

While Wall Street threw raspberries at the Silicon Valley icon for the deal, Microsoft got kudos for grabbing a large piece of share that it could use in its ongoing battle with archrival Google.

In this video interview with me, Mehdi defended it as a "win-win"--what else is he going to say?--for both Yahoo and Microsoft.

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BoomTown is spending the day at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Wash., interviewing a passel of execs about the Yahoo online advertising and search partnership.

But, while here, I have not been able to resist trotting out this very funny puppet video by 1938 Media of sweat-stained Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gone wild, screaming about how he smoked the Yahoo partnership, to every Softie I see.

Because I am that sensitive.

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Isn't it ironic that Yahoo once employed--and for a very long time--top search techie Qi Lu and here he was on stage at the Financial Analyst Meeting at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Wash., after having just scooped up that business for the software giant.

Lu, who is now president of the Online Services division at Microsoft, was not generous with the details, although he did say making the partnership work was his No. 2 priority after Microsoft's own search business.

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"This is the one that stuns me, that people haven't figured it out," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this morning in Redmond at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting, truly surprised at Yahoo investors' negative reception to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. How to convince them otherwise? Not to fear, Steve! The Microsoft-Yahoo propaganda machine is in full swing and has already produced its first talking-points docs.

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First up at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting today, as you might imagine, is CEO Steve Ballmer, who is as bouncy and braggy as I have ever seen him, probably because he is fresh from getting his mitts on a long-sought-after prize--the search business of Yahoo.

But, while Wall Street thinks Microsoft made out well in the deal, the opinion about Yahoo's side of the deal has been not so positive, with its shares down another five percent today already, after plummeting 12 percent yesterday.

Thus, Ballmer to the rescue!

"This is the one that stuns me, that people haven’t figured it out," said Ballmer. "It’s sort of, like, unbelievable."

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The fun never stops at Microsoft, it seems.

Well, not fun--more like a long march of khaki-clad Softies.

They will be on display bright and early this morning at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting, a cavalcade of top execs at the tech giant blabbing away.

Big topics? I am interested in the recent billion-dollar revenue miss in earnings and, of course, more details about the Yahoo search deal.

BoomTown will be there covering it in person, natch!

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Wall Street is finally having its say about the newly announced Microsoft-Yahoo deal, and while opinions are mixed, there is some consensus on who got the better end of the deal: Microsoft. Seems the Street would have much preferred the "boatloads of money" Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz once said she'd demand for a search deal than the "boatloads of value" she claims to have given them this morning. After the jump, a roundup of analysts' notes issued about the deal.

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Once again for old time's sake, the Yahoo-Microsoft soap opera in Digital Daily intros, with apologies to Steven Spielberg, Mel Blanc, Queen, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich and the entire cast of "The Sound of Music."

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With upward of two-thirds of the search market, depending on what survey you use, one would not imagine that Google would worry too much about any kind of hookup of Microsoft and Yahoo.

Think again.

Sources at Google said the company is bracing for a more robust rival, which will force the company to compete and innovate more aggressively.

They add that Google will likely try to keep a low profile at first in opposing the deal announced today, positing that regulators have the same opinion about fewer competitors in the market as they did when opposing a similar Google-Yahoo search deal last year.

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BoomTown was so glad we had this time together with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, just to have a laugh or sing a song about a major search and advertising deal.

I liveblogged the conference call, which I updated as it happened.

Did Ballmer scream and jump up and down? Did Carol say something naughty?

Read on!

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says the company’s newly inked search advertising pact “comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo,” but you wouldn’t know it to look at the company’s share price. Yahoo’s shares slipped into the mud on the deal's announcement, declining nearly seven percent to $16.07 in early trading.

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Here is Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's letter to the Yahoo "fans," which appeared on the company's blog this morning.

Main messages: Better! Google is a lopsided monster! Microsoft is a frenemy!

And, mostest of all: WOW!

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According to several sources close to the situation--under the terms of a pending large-scale deal, in which Yahoo would sell search advertising for its sites and some of Microsoft's, while Microsoft search technology would power it--Yahoo would get to keep pretty much all the revenue and more for the next three years.

Sources said that in the first two years of the partnership, which is expected to be announced tomorrow, Yahoo would keep 110 percent of all revenue. And, in the third, Yahoo would get 90 percent.

That could represent many billions of dollars, since Yahoo will be selling for both companies.

For Microsoft, the payment will--within four years--allow the company to become the de facto No. 2 search technology player after Google.

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As BoomTown reported earlier today, Yahoo and Microsoft have struck a search and online advertising partnership that sources said will be announced tomorrow.

But it is eminently instructive to look at the deal that Microsoft had offered Yahoo almost exactly a year ago, which was rejected by Yahoo in favor of a competing bid by Google.

The Yahoogle deal, of course, failed, after regulators looked askance at a partnership of the No. 1 and No. 2 search players.

The new deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, according to sources, certainly seems a lot smaller than the one offered last June, although there might be a surprise yet to come.

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Multiple sources close to the situation said that the online search and advertising deal between Microsoft and Yahoo has been struck and will be announced within the next 24 hours.

While it is not clear if the actual papers have been inked or approved by the boards of the two companies, sources said it was a formality and that negotiations are complete on a deal that is less sweeping than originally conceived.

In any case, making any partnership is likely to be the cause of much relief at both companies, since they have been trying--without success--to join together to mount a better offense in the search sector against the dominant Google.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the software giant's relaunch of its search offering, dubbed Bing, onstage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference. Bing is Microsoft's biggest and priciest attempt yet to catch archrival Google and Yahoo in the search business. It is a market where the typically dominant Microsoft is a mouse in comparison. But, no surprise, that did not stop Ballmer from doing some roaring about Bing.

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