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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Earlier today, BoomTown reported that Yahoo was poised to name a few new top execs at its Silicon Valley HQ.

But the company has also hired a new director of public affairs in the nation’s capital–Amber Allman of 463 Communications.

With a spate of regulatory issues coming up around its pending search and online advertising deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will need all the help it can get.

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is making the most substantive changes in her exec ranks since she did a massive restructuring of its staff in late February, according to sources close to the situation.

“She is continuing to clean the place up,” said one top exec about the moves, which are likely to be announced internally tomorrow.

Will these changes also extend to Yahoo’s board?

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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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It certainly is good to see Microsoft working the innovation thing, especially in the consumer space with its Bing search service.

The ultimate goal is to gain market share for Bing, from striking deals with hotter companies like Twitter and Facebook to doing a massive advertising and marketing campaign to making constant feature upgrades.

This is one of those weeks for Bing, with the launch of a spate of new features that show a lot of chutzpah.

But whether all this will spell significant changes in market share compared to dominant rival Google is still an open question.

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While sales of Windows 7 are doing well, Apple is continuing to slap the Microsoft operating system software around.

There was a bunch of mean-spirited “Get a Mac” ads right when Windows 7 was released in late October, stressing consumers dying to switch to Apple when faced with the prospect of upgrading their Microsoft software.

Now there is a name for them: “PC Switchers.” It sounds a little naughty.

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Hollywood is selling the end times hard this week with the opening of “2012,” a blockbuster-style movie about the last days of the world for humanity.

Apparently, we were warned!

It’s based on junk theories about how the 5,125-year-long Mayan Long Count calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012, which can only mean that so goes the universe.

So, until the apocalypse, enjoy the trailers.

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Essentially–although AOL is located in New York and not California–it’s going to be like tremors before the Big One at the online company today as about 100 employees are set to be laid off by management.

It is part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s “Project Everest”–the code name for cost-cutting across the company. After this small cut, there could be a call for voluntary departures, followed by a much more drastic layoff.

The action comes in the same timeframe as the online site’s spinoff from Time Warner.

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Who said the venture capital industry is sucking wind lately?

Well, it is–but not today and, especially, not Accel Partners, which sold two of its portfolio start-ups to large public companies for a total of $1.5 billion.

That would be the sale of AdMob to search behemoth Google for $750 million in stock, and the acquisition of Playfish by gaming giant Electronic Arts for about $300 million.

While Accel is not getting all that dough, it’s not a bad haul for the day.

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Google has a Web page up about today’s acquisition of AdMob for $750 million in stock, which includes this lovely image of the differences between what the Silicon Valley companies do in the mobile advertising space.

Here’s the quick translation: The Web search behemoth has been slower than molasses in the space, sticking with boring blue links of death, especially compared to the innovative and nimbler start-up, which is rocking the pretty ads.

So, we ate it.

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Google has acquired AdMob for $750 million, a huge price for an innovative start-up that hass pioneered online ads on mobile and now smart phones.

BoomTown visited AdMob last fall and posted about how it was likely to eventually be acquired by…Google!

The move is a major one for the search giant, which has been pushing hard into the mobile advertising space as it seeks to grow its already considerable Web business. AdMob is arguably the fastest out of the gate in the nascent arena.

Plus, here’s AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui in a video interview with me last November, as well as the official press release on the sale.

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The new MSN homepage debuts tonight and you would be completely correct in thinking the recipe Microsoft has cooked up to inform its design ethos–white, clean and hiply modern–has definite echoes of a certain longtime tech rival.

That would be Apple, of course, with a big dollop of Twitter and Facebook tossed in, and finished off with a generous sprinkling of Microsoft’s new Bing search service.

For those who care: The MSN butterfly logo remains, although it appears to have lost a lot of weight.

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BoomTown is not quite sure what to think of another new advertising campaign from an Internet giant–this time by eBay.

With the tagline, “Come to Think of It, eBay,” the print, television and online marketing campaign starts today to “boost its standing as a holiday shopping destination.”

Interestingly, the ads have been crafted by San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which has also just nabbed the lead role in the $100 million advertising campaign by Yahoo.

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Now, BoomTown likes a good jingle as much as anyone else, but this new one from Microsoft’s Bing search service is sticking in my head like a piece of chewed gum.

Shot at Keith Valley Middle School in Horsham, Pa., it uses 400 very adorable sixth graders, who are dragooned into one very large “Bing Goes the Internet” dance–complete with logo wear. The kids rock, the jingle not so much.

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