There certainly is a lot of noisy swirl of late around the escalating fight between Google and some traditional media companies over content online.

The loudest voice in this fight has clearly been News Corp. kingpin Rupert Murdoch, who seemingly has not met a television interviewer of late he did not regale with tales of the search giant’s nefariousness. He’s also tried to get Google biggest nemesis, Microsoft involved in what has become a wrestling match over the future of news.

But what’s really happening here? Here are five possibilities to consider.

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According to sources, Microsoft is close to striking a nonexclusive data-mining deal with Twitter to integrate the microblogging service’s full feed into the results of its Bing search service.

News of the deal, which was still being worked on by engineers and execs at both the software giant and the start-up as late as yesterday, could even come as early as today at the Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco.

But sources close to the situation caution that the deal could still run into a snag and was not yet complete, although it seems more likely than not that a deal will soon be struck with Microsoft first and then Google, which is the other company Twitter has also been talking to.

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Well, what else is Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz going to do, but talk smack?

Not at BoomTown–that was so two weeks ago!

About potential partner Microsoft, of course!

And, especially about its new Bing search engine.

And, most especially of all, since new stats from comScore yesterday showed that the new look and marketing push for Bing are showing promising initial signs.

Rut-roh!

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Yesterday, Yahoo celebrated the fifth anniversary of the launch of its own search engine with some good news about its market share and by jazzing up its paid listings today with a plan to include pictures and video in the online ads.

Will the “rich” ad search product work better, a kind of digital little engine that could?

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