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.”

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.

One of the factors behind the US Justice Department’s (DOJ’s) objection to the now-defunct Google-Yahoo search ads deal, which was far less sweeping than the pending Yahoo-Bing/Microsoft deal, was the objection of the powerful advertising trade organization the Association of National Advertisers. Now, another advertising trade organization, the “4As,” or American Association of Advertising Agencies, has formally announced its support for the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal.

Below is the full text of the letter, which was signed by 4As President and CEO Nancy Hill, along with the heads of the four major advertising holding companies–Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe; Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP; Michael I. Roth, Chairman and CEO, Interpubic Group of Companies; and John Wren, President and CEO, Omnicom Group:

Advertising is the fuel that powers the Internet. Most websites depend on online advertising to survive – it’s what allows them to offer consumers free content and services.

A very important form of online advertising is search advertising – the sponsored links that appear when a search engine answers a query. A healthy, competitive market for search and search advertising is crucial to the Internet’s future. We believe that Yahoo! and Microsoft’s proposal to combine their technologies and search platforms is good for advertisers, marketing services agencies, website publishers and consumers.

These benefits are too important to wait for. As leading members of the advertising and marketing services industry, we urge the Department of Justice to bring its antitrust review to a speedy conclusion. This proposal enhances competition, and should be allowed to take effect as soon as possible.

I’m sure there were plenty of discussions behind the scenes and this wasn’t simply a spontaneous expression of good will; just as there was much behind-the-scenes lobbying that resulted in objections to the earlier Google-Yahoo search ads deal. Regardless, this public pronouncement will have influence and make DOJ acceptance and approval of the Bing/Microsoft deal much more likely in my opinion.

When it comes to search, Facebook’s focus was, is, and apparently always will be on the idea of “friend search.” That’s the main conclusion you draw from reading paidContent’s interview with Akhil Wable, the man leading Facebook’s search product.

Friend search is becoming a core part of the social web experience, and it’s an area where other companies are trying to compete with Facebook on some levels. Yahoo just announced an update to Yahoo Profiles with a focus on sharing and finding out what friends are doing. Google Reader has friend sharing features built in. And “friend search” is what FriendFeed is all about, which is certainly why Facebook bought FriendFeed last month.

In the paidContent interview, Wable says Facebook’s focus on friend search won’t change:

“When we look at where Facebook provides value it really is understanding the user, the things they care about, things that they are connected to. That, sort of, will always be the core focus.”

Late last year, Facebook further integrated web search when it allowed users to search the web via Live Search (now Bing) without leaving Facebook. Wable pretty much sidesteps the question about how many have Facebook users have tried the Bing web search (”In general, I would say they get used”), and downplays the presence of Bing results on Facebook as little more than filler.

“I think Bing is not front and center. (It) sort of adds value to what search is already doing. It definitely isn’t core. It definitely isn’t the most popular thing that people are clicking on but it’s definitely adding enough value that we actually put it in the product.”

Wable says he doesn’t see Twitter search or Google as competitors at this point because of Facebook’s focus on friend search.

Speaking of Google, though, DailyFinance ran an article Thursday that asks if Facebook might “kill Google” in the advertising space. The article shares anecdotal stories from small advertisers who’ve found more success with Facebook ads than Google AdWords. But it’s a David vs. Goliath question at this point, and if Google were concerned, they could quite easily share exponentially more stories of small advertisers who found the opposite to be true — more success with AdWords than Facebook.

The NY Times offers an extensive and flattering profile of the former Yahoo EVP Qi Lu who, in January, 2009 was named president of online services for Microsoft. Lu was deemed an unlikely appointment by some given his background not as a business and advertising executive but rather as an engineer. However, he was apparently instrumental in helping facilitate the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal.

One of the striking things about the article is the uniform praise Lu receives from former Yahoo colleages and Google’s Udi Manber: “He is probably the best competition I can have.” The other is Lu’s devotion to his work:

He sleeps three to four hours a night. One most weekdays, he wakes up around 4 a.m., goes through his e-mail and runs four miles on a treadmill while listening to classical music or watching the news.

He prefers to be in his office between 5 and 6 a.m. to have uninterrupted time to prepare for his day. He is often sending e-mail to his staff until midnight or later. (Mr. Lu, who is married and has two daughters, reserves much of the weekend to spend with his family.)

(As a personal, editorial aside I would submit that while Mr. Lu is to be admired for his loyalty and devotion to his work, I hope Microsoft isn’t setting his work habits up as a model for others to emulate.)

Reportedly Lu sees his work at Microsoft as an opportunity to continue a mission in search he began at Yahoo. While the cultures of Yahoo and Microsoft are different, perhaps the most important difference at Microsoft is that Lu and his team have far more resources to bring to bear on search than he did previously.

The division Lu heads up, which houses search and online advertising, is a strategic but money losing business unit for Microsoft. No doubt Lu is under some pressure to improve the performance of that group and would ultimately be held accountable if it does not.

For its part, Bing is off to a solid start. That fact and the Yahoo deal offers Microsoft the best chance it’s had in years to make a competitive run at Google.

I blogged the keynote interview with Lu from SMX Advanced in June of this year.

Those with BT broadband in the UK have noticed that the Yahoo/BT portal at bt.yahoo.com has a new search technology provider. You would guess that if Yahoo would replace their own search technology, it would be in exchange for Bing, in light of the recent news about the Bing & Yahoo deal. You would be wrong to think that because Google is now powering the search technology Yahoo/BT portal.

Here is a screen capture of the search box that now says, “Powered by Google,” taken from ConnectedInternet.co.uk, which tipped us to this:

I know the Yahoo and Microsoft deal has not been signed off on yet, but you have to admit, this is a bit comical?

This morning Yahoo announced that it was acquiring Maktoob.com, “the leading online community in the Arab world.” According to Yahoo the site has an audience of 16.5 million people. The purchase price has been estimated at between $75 and $100 million and was apparently in the works before the search deal with Microsoft was announced last month. Yahoo said the acquisition is part of a larger strategy to grow its audience in emerging markets and become the “destination of choice” in those locations.

Yahoo described its Maktoob rollout strategy in in a blog post:

Initially, we’ll plan to introduce Arabic versions of Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Search, and our homepage and then eventually local versions of properties like News, Sports, and Finance. We’ll also focus on creating content and services tailored to the region. No other global company has made this kind of investment in local relevance for the Arab world.

Unless I’m mistaken regarding the scope of the MicroHoo search deal it appears that Microsoft, without spending a dime, gets to piggyback onto the search aspect of the Maktoob acquisition. Accordingly Bing gets the potential reach that the deal provides in the Arab world.

Google has sites for most arabic-speaking countries. The following is a chart (via AdAge) that reflects Google’s market share in a selected group of markets outside the US. It’s dominant in Turkey, the one muslim-world country reflected on the chart:

PaidContent raises the potential issue of media and speech censorship in the Arab world and likens it to China and the problems and criticism that Yahoo has encountered from its cooperation in Chinese government crackdowns.

A little more than three months after its launch, Wolfram Alpha is getting smarter, bigger (in a couple ways), and busier. That’s the word from Stephen Wolfram in a blog post about the site’s progress so far. Not mentioned in his post is an unconfirmed report from TechCrunch that Wolfram Alpha also has a licensing deal with Bing.

Wolfram says one of the main challenges his fact engine has faced so far is in how people type queries:

“Close to half the time that Wolfram|Alpha doesn’t give a result, it’s not because it doesn’t have the necessary knowledge, or can’t do the necessary computation. It’s because it doesn’t understand what’s being asked.”

To that point, Wolfram says the team has “reduced the ‘fall-through rate’ of queries we don’t understand by 10%.” In addition to getting smarter, Wolfram says the project is also getting bigger: the development team is growing, as is the site’s codebase, which has more than two million new lines of code.

But there’s no mention of the reported licensing deal with Bing. TechCrunch says Wolfram Alpha will share some of its data with Microsoft’s new search engine. A Microsoft email says the company is not confirming the report, and a Wolfram Alpha spokesperson refused our request for comment.

Facebook said this afternoon that it’s “beginning the roll out of Facebook Search to all users,” which was previously being selectively tested. I’m unable to see it yet. But the Facebook blog explains:

You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications.

Search at Facebook has been pretty lousy and so this represents a big opportunity for the site to become more useful and engaging — more than it already is, that is. There doesn’t appear to be any larger integration of internal and external Web search (Microsoft). The latter is still an unrealized opportunity for both Facebook and Microsoft.

For those who don’t have the new search yet, see our What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players article, which explains it more. That article also looks at FriendFeed, which Facebook announced it was buying today.

Yesterday Microsoft and French advertising holding company Publicis Groupe announced that the latter was buying agency Razorfish. Razorfish came to Microsoft as part of the $6 billion aQuantive deal, the largest acquisition in Redmond’s history.

As part of the deal Publicis will give Microsoft 6.5 million shares, amounting to a roughly 3 percent stake in the holding company. The total value of the deal is estimated at $530 million. Just over half of that will be in cash. According to a statement by Publicis CEO Maurice Levy, “Once this acquisition is complete, about a quarter of our revenue will come from digital communication…”

In an earlier, parallel move, Publicis also bought Performics from Google almost exactly a year ago. Performics was part of the DoubleClick transaction.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

As part of the pact, Publicis has entered a “strategic alliance” with Microsoft, which includes a five-year media-buying relationship. In return for buying a certain amount of display and search advertising on Microsoft properties, Publicis will receive better ad rates.

Publicis also has similar sounding deal with Google, though there don’t appear to be any ad-buying quotas or favorable pricing as part of that relationship.

The Microsoft-Publicis deal includes paid search. One question is: how will this deal affect Yahoo’s role selling “premium search” on behalf of both Microsoft and itself? Publicis’ advertisers are all the kind that fall into the “premium” category.