Ever since Microsoft (MSFT) launched its Bing search engine last May, there’s been buzz that it’s been talking with Wolfram Alpha to license some of its search data. In August, I was able to confirm that a deal had indeed been struck between the two. Today, Bing is finally rolling out its first integration with Wolfram Alpha for searches around diet and nutrition.

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned a few weeks ago that the M&A spigot is now back on at the search giant, he wasn’t talking about a trickle. Monday’s announced deal to by mobile ad startup AdMob for $750 million is Google’s (GOOG) largest acquisition since its $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick in March, 2008, and its third-largest ever after the $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition in 2006.

Whenever Rupert Murdoch goes back to his home country of Australia, he loosens up and says things to the press (usually his own outlets) that he might not say in the U.S. Of course, everyone in the U.S. picks up on it and it becomes a big story, as it did Monday after Murdoch told his own Sky News that he might start blocking Google (GOOG) and other search engines from giving searchers full access to articles on the Wall Street Journal’s website, WSJ.com. Asked whether he realized that Google was sending his news site a ton of traffic, Murdoch responded, ”We’d rather have fewer people coming to our Websites, but paying.”

Do you see something strange in this screenshot of Google’s homepage today? No, not Bert and Ernie (it’s Sesame Street’s 40th birthday). It’s that ad for the Verizon Droid right there under the search box (today is also Droid Day). Although, the juxtaposition does make it seem like Bert and Ernie are trying to get you to buy a Droid.

Earlier this morning, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis settled their lawsuits with eBay and a syndicate of investors in return for a 14 percent stake in the company they founded. The lawsuits were complicating the spin-off of Skype from eBay because the Skype founders still controlled the service’s underlying peer-to-peer technology.

The latest twist in the ongoing settlement talks between Google (GOOG) and book authors is that Wednesday, the judge in the case denied an attempt by photographers to become part of the settlement. In the decision (embedded below), Judge Denny Chin basically ruled that photographers are not authors, and that the settlement only covers “word-based material,” with the exception of illustrations in children’s books.

NBC is gearing up for the 2010 Winter Olympics with some changes to its mainstay site, NBCOlympics.com, scheduled to go live Wednesday. (See screenshots below). Once again, just as it did with the 2008 Summer Olympics, NBC will be using a video player based on Microsoft Silverlight technology to offer full HD videos. Except this time, the video player will have DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them.

There is a perception that Google’s Chrome is a rounding error when it comes to browsers. And maybe it still is, but Google (GOOG) is now fighting that perception in a very public way. Monday, it announced that the Chrome Team won a Founder’s Award for their achievements so far, and revealed how many people are using the Chrome browser: 30 million active users.

One of the biggest sources of new searches in the coming years for Google (GOOG) will come from mobile devices, which is why it is attacking mobile on multiple fronts—with Android phones, mobile apps, and mobile search across multiple devices. One of its more impressive efforts lately has been around voice search. Not every phone has a touchscreen or a full keyboard, and some languages simply aren’t keyboard-friendly, and that is where voice search comes in extra handy.

For advertisers on the Web, behavioral targeting is held out as the nirvana they’ve been waiting for: the ability to show ads only to those people most likely to be interested in them based on their past behavior. The growth of this type of ad targeting also raises a host of privacy concerns, but setting those aside for a second, do these ads even work? Do they perform better than regular ads? If they did, you’d expect advertisers to pay more for them and for Website publishers to be flocking to them.

When Google (GOOG) announced what is clearly the best car navigation application on any mobile Wednesday, it didn’t just take a swipe at GPS navigation companies such as Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom (TMOAF.PK). It took a swipe at Apple (AAPL).

Google (GOOG) released a new mobile navigation app Wednesday and GPS navigation companies such as Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom saw their shares take a plunge. The announcement shaved $1.2 billion off of Garmin’s market cap alone. Its shares are down more than 16 percent so far Wednesday to $31.60. TomTom’s shares are down 21 percent to $8.11.

Remember when Yahoo (YHOO) started to roll out its new homepage last summer? It’s been live for all users for about three months now, and Wednesday Yahoo’s annual Analyst Day, senior vice president Tapan Bhat gave an overview of how the redesigned homepage is performing. In the past three months, pageviews are up 9 percent, and time spent on the homepage is up 20 percent.

A couple days ago at the Web 2.0 Summit, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong caused a little bit of a stir when he hinted that AOL is working on a “secret” technology project. When pressed for details on what exactly it is, he was vague. But after fishing around with our sources, we have a pretty good idea.

FY10 Q1 Slides Flattened –

Microsoft (MSFT) announced another down quarter Friday. Revenues in the September quarter were down 14 percent to $12.92 billion, and net profits declined even further to $3.57 billion, or $0.40 a share. The consensus estimate was $0.32, so Wall Street is happy and the shares are rallying (up 10 percent in early-morning trading).

It was another bleak quarter for the New York Times (NYT), which keeps on shrinking. The New York Times announced third quarter earnings Thursday. Total revenues were down 17 percent to $571 million. Of that advertising revenues decreased 27 percent to $291 million, and the online advertising portion was down 8.2 percent to $68 million.

After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Google (GOOG) to give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter’s the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry. A rudimentary version of Bing’s Twitter search is already live, and it will soon add public Facebook updates to its search results as well.

Even though it is embroiled in a nasty legal battle with its founders over its future, Skype continues to rack up impressive numbers. In today’s third quarter earnings from eBay (EBAY) (which still owns Skype, but is preparing to unload it), the company breaks out Skype’s performance (see slide above).

YQ3_Q309EarningsPresentationFINAL –

Yahoo (YHOO) announced third quarter earnings today, showing net income more than tripling to $186 million, or $0.13 a share, nearly double analysts estimates of $0.07 a share.

This was definitely a financial achievement for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, but it was done almost entirely through cost cutting. Total operating expenses of $775 million was pared down by $169 million from a year ago. In comparison, net income rose $130 million from a year ago.

As Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) await government approval of their pending deal to join their two search businesses at the hip, the two companies received an important endorsement today from the world’s top advertisers.