According to AllThingsD the MicroHoo search deal is nearing completion and “definitive agreement” status. Speculation that the deal was in trouble started happening when the two companies failed to meet their self-imposed October 27 deadline to finalize the complex agreement. However it appears the circumstances were just as reported in the parties’ 8-K filing with the US Securities & Exchange Commission:

The Letter Agreement specified that the parties would execute Definitive Agreements by October 27, 2009, but given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some details to be finalized. The parties are working diligently on finalizing the agreements, have made good progress to date, and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible . . .

On the regulatory front AllThingsD reports that “several sources said, those government approvals are now nearing completion at the Justice Department, even though the Federal Trade Commission might still ask for more assurances on privacy issues related to online advertising and consumer data.” Europe must also approve the deal.

According to the most recent comScore search market share data, the combined reach of MicroHoo search would be 27.9% vs. Google’s 65.4%. Assuming the deal goes through up next for Microsoft would be a decision about whether to attempt to buy Ask, which IAC’s Barry Diller is open to selling, and whether to bid for AOL’s search-ad business when that deal comes up for renewal in 2010.

However a MicroHoo approval would potentially make a later Ask acquisition (or maybe even an AOL deal) harder because it would reduce the number of independent search engines in the market.

You may not have known this but the Microsoft Maps experience in the UK was totally different than in the US. The former was based on multiMap, a company Microsoft acquired in 2007. Here’s what the UK experience looks like with multiMap:

Here’s what a Bing Maps version of London looks like:

The Bing version is quite a bit cleaner and more pleasing in my view. Many of the Bing Maps capabilities, such as “Birds Eye” aerial imagery, had been available through multiMap prior to this however.

Now Bing Maps proper will be available in the UK. The Bing Community blog details the changes to the mapping interface and features, including new navigation and mapping layers that can be turned on or off. Many of these improvements parallel recent upgrades made in the US to the Bing Maps interface and features.

While Bing is happily rolling out new search features, Microsoft can also smile at the latest search engine market share report from Experian Hitwise.

Google is still light years ahead of Yahoo, Bing, and Ask … but Experian Hitwise shows Bing with a 7% increase during October, while both Google and Yahoo saw small drops in search share.

Experian Hitwise also updates some stats related to search queries:

“Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, increased 3 percent between October and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 4 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – decreased 1 percent from month to month.”

Postscript: Enquisite has published its own research on search engine referral data. It shows Google even further ahead of Yahoo, Bing, et al. But this chart tracks click thrus from each search engine, not the number of searches done.

There’s a lot of news today coming out of Bing headquarters, perhaps most notably that the long-rumored partnership with Wolfram Alpha is finally coming to fruition.

Bing’s announcement today explains that the collaboration will cover two specific areas: nutritional information and mathematics.

Nutritional Data

With help from Wolfram Alpha, Bing says it can now help users make smarter diet choices. When searching for specific food items, searchers will see a new Nutrition tab that offers more information. And at the bottom of the search results page, Bing will show the nutrition facts labels — the kind you see on product packaging.

Bing is also pulling in a Body Mass Index calculator from Wolfram Alpha that lets user learn about BMI within Bing’s search results.

Mathematics Data

This is where we all expected any Bing-Wolfram Alpha partnership to be revealed: using Bing’s search box to get the kind of computational results and data that Wolfram Alpha is perhaps best known for.

These new Wolfram-powered features will roll out in the U.S. “over the next several days.” Bing has also posted three short video interview clips with Wolfram Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram talking about their partnership.

State of the search engine

In a separate blog post, Bing has shared what amounts to a “state of the search engine” report. In it, Bing recaps and reveals some of the new features and tools that have been added since its May/June launch and talks about what Bing has learned from usage patterns and focus group testing.

The new features include

• quicker access to Bing’s popular travel search features from the Bing.com home page
• faster access to flight search and listings data
• new “city results pages” with important information about popular attractions, city photos, local neighborhoods and more
• new “page preview” features, including pulling contact information from a web page and showing it in Bing’s search results previews
• new “event search” functionality with categorized events for “major cities”
• a “search sharing” tool for product results that lets users send a result to friends via email or on Facebook/Twitter
• new search results for some health-related queries, with more information and newly organized sets of results

As with the Wolfram Alpha integration, Bing says these new features will start to show up in search results over the next “several days.”

Who expected the search wars to open a new front involving WiFi? Google, Bing & Yahoo have each just announced free WiFi promotions of various sorts.

Google, which previously said it would provide free WiFi on all Virgin America flights through early next year, is now going to provide it at 47 US airports through the end of the year. A partial list includes “Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely,” says the press release. (Here’s the full list.)

According to Fortune:

Upon signing in, users will be asked if they want to set Google as their homepage or try the Google Chrome browser.

The company is also running a charity campaign to raise money for three nonprofit groups: Engineers without Borders, One Economy Corporation and Climate Savers Computing Initiative. When Google WiFi users first log on, the landing page will offer them the option of donating to the organizations. Google will match donations of up to $250,000 per airport.

For its part, Bing and JiWire will offer free WiFi at a broad range of hotspots in airports and hotels, in exchange for users conducting a search on Bing. It’s part of JiWire’s “Ads for Access” program. According to MediaPost’s article:

Microsoft’s Bing and JiWire will announce Monday an advertising campaign, along with the results, that lets consumers gain free WiFi Internet access at participating hot spots in exchange for one search on the engine.

Supported by JiWire’s mobile advertising network, which reaches about 20 million unique consumers monthly, Bing’s nationwide campaign runs across WiFi hotspots in airports and hotels.

The campaign aims to make more people aware of Bing and allow them to try the search engine, according to David Blumenfeld, senior vice president of strategy and business development at JiWire. “We’re all creatures of habit, so giving away free Internet access in exchange for one search on Bing is a great way to change user behavior,” he says.

Finally, Yahoo is providing free WiFi in New York’s Times Square, which also has a mobile angle. In 2006, Yahoo had a deal with Starwood hotels that subsidized WiFi in the chain’s Sheraton hotels. That deal is no longer in force however.

All these efforts are welcome but they’re only temporary. Eventually there will be ubiquitous WiFi/4G connectivity that will enable people out in the world to connect at higher speeds, hopefully for lower cost, than they can today through traditional WiFi networks.

Google has now added Hawaii to Street View, making it the 50th and final US state to be included in the Maps image database. You can also get these images in Google Maps for Mobile.

Google launched Street View a little more than two years ago, in May 2007. Since that time there has been considerable controversy around privacy questions but one now gets the sense that this has largely died down in most places. From early questions about its utility, Street View has become an important part of the Google Maps offering (and is integrated into the new Android 2.0 Maps Navigation). More recently Google has pushed beyond paved highways and onto trials, college campuses and zoos with its Street View trike.

Meanwhile Microsoft’s Bing Maps has added some new features and changed the look and feel of the interface slightly. LiveSide discovered the changes, which include:

• More prominent and simplified directions boxes
• Easier access to user-generated maps and images in “user-contributed places”
• Collections is renamed “My Places”

In the user-contributed maps, users can sort by categories, content and layers.

Microsoft changed the terms of service for  Bing Maps for educators, developers and non-profits, essentially making them more generous. The company also released Silverlight Control for maps. I’m not able to speak to the range of technical issues here, but generally it allows for the creation of richer mapping applications.

Microsoft has a very strong mapping product that has largely been overshadowed by Google, which has done a better job of PR and communications around maps. Indeed, Microsoft offered user-created maps before Google My Maps and has a great product in Photosyth, which Google has emulated to some degree in a couple of ways. And maps is an area that Microsoft and Bing could do a great deal more with online and in mobile. They understand this too.

Meanwhile a short while ago MapQuest, the long reigning but recently deposed maps king, improved the appearance of its mapping interface. We’ll see what former Googler and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong tries to do with MapQuest, which is one of the company’s key properties.

Update: The Bing Community and Bing Maps Blogs lay out the details of the new Bing Maps features, including draggable routing, enhanced zooming, embeddable maps, new navigation and faster load times.

In the increasingly high stakes game of mobile search, Google is leaving almost nothing to chance. Take the company’s very interesting new partnership with Best Buy stores for example. According to the Google Mobile Blog:

We’re happy to announce today that we’ve partnered with Best Buy Mobile to make Google Mobile App available through Best Buy stores in the US . . . now [users] have the option to get some help installing the app or to see a live demo of what the application can do. Just go to the mobile department at your nearest Best Buy store and talk to an associate. If you have a BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or S60 phone, they can help install Google Mobile App on your phone. And if you’re in the market to buy a new phone, they will help you install the application as part of their Walk Out Working program.

I haven’t been in Best Buy to experience this yet, but out of curiosity I will go and see (just like a “secret shopper”). I would imagine there will be some sort of in-store display or kiosk within Best Buy mobile — the “store within a store” concept — to generate awareness. But will there also be traditional media (Best Buy newspaper circular, TV) to support this and let customers know they can see a demo and get installation help?

What about new phone buyers? Will there be a “would you like fries with that” moment? In other words: “Would you like us to help you install the Google app on your new BlackBerry Bold”?

In the traditional world, retailers are paid all the time for their shelf and floor space by product producers that want to grab attention in the store. In many ways the store shelves themselves represent advertising “inventory” in this context. The Google-Best Buy deal is probably no exception. I’ll seek confirmation but it’s all but certain that Google is paying Best Buy to have its employees promote and install the app.

What’s also interesting is the fact that the Google blog post mentions “BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or S60 phone.” There’s no mention of the iPhone or Android devices. Presumably then Google is happy with what it’s seeing from the users of those platforms. The language of the blog post implies that it’s not as satisfied with the number of searches and usage it’s getting from “BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or S60 phone.”

BlackBerry still has the largest base of users among the various smartphone platforms in the US. (Symbian/Nokia dominates globally). And pursuant to the Microsoft-Verizon deal the Bing app ships with the touchscreen Storm 2.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who don’t know very well that “apps” exist or if they do still don’t know how to install them. Unless this relationship evolves or has other dimensions not yet revealed there seems to be something strangely disproportionate about it. Think about it: we’re talking about an app — not Android handsets.

We’re definitely in what might be called “land grab” stage of mobile, with the major search engines and a broad range of companies scrambling to gain users and visibility. While we can expect considerable evolution in the mobile experience and even “mobile search,” certain user behaviors established now may persist over time. So Google is being quite shrewd and potentially strategic with this deal — though it seems a little excessive for an app.

Postscript: Upon reflection . . . Android doesn’t need a Google app, given that all the features of the Google app (and more) are baked into the UI and OS.

There’s a report from Reuters this morning that Microsoft and Yahoo are considering expanding the scope of their search deal “outside the United States”:

Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday the company could look to extend its search engine partnership with Yahoo outside the United States, if it gets regulatory approval.

Wasn’t that already the intention? I thought it was a global deal already. European regulators wouldn’t be considering it if it didn’t apply to their markets; they wouldn’t have jurisdiction. So I guess I’m a bit confused I guess.

Regardless, if either the EU or US Department of Justice disapproves the deal it will kill the whole thing globally in all likelihood. I would expect approval although it’s also possible that limitations and conditions could be attached by regulators.

Reportedly Barry Diller, CEO of IAC Corp., wants to sell Ask — perhaps feeling he’s ridden the wave as far as he can (with some disappointment). If so, the most likely buyer would be Microsoft according to widespread speculation. It would allow Microsoft to grab some incremental but meaningful share of the market. The question would be at what price?

Timing is huge here. If Ying/MicroHoo were to gain approval from regulators, or the appearance of forthcoming approval were strong, the value of Ask to Microsoft is less than if the Yahoo deal were not to go through. In the latter case Diller could exact a higher price than in the former. There could be other buyers out there for Ask (e.g., News Corp., Comcast?) but Microsoft is the one with more to gain from adding scale.

According to comScore, Ask maintains a small but meaningful core following:

That respresents 718 million queries in September, according to the metrics firm. However iCrossing recently said it has seen referrals to its clients’ sites from Ask drop “precipitously.”

Postscript: The following was a clarification that I received in email from a Microsoft spokesperson:

[T]he Microsoft-Yahoo! agreement does apply outside the United States. As it’s written, it must be approved by regulators in the U.S. and Europe in order to go into effect. As soon as those regulators give approval, the agreement goes into effect worldwide, although implementation in a specific country is postponed if regulatory approval is required there and it is not yet obtained. But that will not postpone implementation in other places.

Microsoft is retiring its MSNBot1.1 and introducing its next bot: 2.0B. According to the Bing Community blog:

As MSNBot 2.0b enters full-scale production, the time has come to retire our previous generation bot, MSNBot 1.1. By the end of the first week in November, you will no longer see the following user agent in your referrer logs:

msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

The only Bing user agent you will see in your logs from this point forward will be this, our new bot:

msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

The Bing team promises the new bot will deliver a better and richer crawl accordingly.

Billed as the first major redesign in a decade, Microsoft has introduced a dramatic new look and feel for the MSN portal. The redesign simplifies and cleans up most elements on the site. Among other things, it makes video more central, incorporates Facebook and Twitter, creates a dedicated new local area and emphasizes search.

MSN, which Microsoft says now has 600 million users globally (which would make it larger than Yahoo), is a huge asset for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it drives roughly 45% of Bing’s queries. Even a cursory look at the old and new MSN homepages reveals the superiority of the new design:

After users log in and grant access to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, the activity streams of both sites appear in the lower right of the MSN homepage (the blank area above):

The new local edition does a nice job of aggregating a range of local content (e.g., restaurants and entertainment, news, film, traffic, gas prices, etc.) and presenting it in a direct and accessible manner, with maps and local search functionality as well.

Microsoft told me that the redesign was prompted by user feedback and a growing internal sense that the old design was cluttered and had grown stale. When I met with Microsoft we also discussed and compared the Yahoo homepage redesign of several months ago. The most prominent feature of the Yahoo homepage redesign is the left column of widgets or apps, which ask users to select and personalize the page accordingly.

Microsoft expressed skepticism that lots of people will in fact get involved with a high degree of explicit personalization like this. There will, however, be personalization on MSN but it will not be as obvious to end users as the personalization elements on the Yahoo site. Microsoft will be offering “smart headlines” based on user location, behavior and demographic segment.

The new MSN will roll out globally over the next several months. Interestingly the look of the MSN portal may be slightly different country to country, depending on variables unique to each local market. Microsoft also says that it will bring the new MSN experience to mobile devices as well.

I haven’t systematically gone through every link and page in the new MSN site but from what I’ve been able to look at, it’s a big improvement over the former design.

If Microsoft enjoys success with the new MSN site it’s likely to directly benefit Bing. Previously many users were reportedly abandoning MSN for Google to conduct search queries. That’s probably less likely to happen now. But we’ll see what transpires over the next month or two. Regardless the new design makes MSN a much better place to visit.

Here’s a review of MSN designs over the past several years. See also related discussion on Techmeme.