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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Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.

Garlinghouse, who will remain on the West Coast, will be named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.

He will also be, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, its “CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”

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Satish Dharmaraj–the founder of open-source email start-up Zimbra, which has been at the heart of significant new changes to Yahoo’s key communications services–will be leaving the company.

Yahoo paid $350 million for Zimbra in the fall of 2007.

And even though he had stepped back from leadership in the communications arena at Yahoo, the departure of an innovative entrepreneur like Dharmaraj–although typical when big companies buy start-ups–is never a good thing, given that it’s more important than ever to keep innovative leaders at Yahoo.

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Microsoft officially rolled out its next version of its Windows Live Services tonight, with a heavy emphasis on socializing its online offerings and giving users better tools to share all sorts of information from across the Web within them.

Microsoft said the changes–similar to those made by Yahoo and AOL recently–would “begin rolling out to customers in the U.S. over the coming weeks and will be made available globally in 54 countries and in 48 languages by early 2009.”

You might call this the “Facebooking” of Windows Live, which is the brand name for Microsoft’s communications and other related online services aimed at consumers, especially because the much anticipated changes also include a new profile and a “What’s New” feed.

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Yesterday, BoomTown wrote a piece about Yahoo’s worries about the scrutiny that the monopolistic combination of Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Hotmail would get, if it merged with the software giant.

The issue–which has not gotten a lot of attention–is actually a major sticking point in the price negotiations going on this weekend between the companies, as Yahoo seeks solid downside protection if the deal becomes mired in approval issues by governmental authorities due to email and instant messaging dominance on the Web.

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So why is Yahoo’s board holding out for a higher price than Microsoft wants to offer to raise it?

According to sources close to Yahoo, one of the more important reasons Yahoo wants a higher price has a lot to do with worries about the domination of the email and communications market if a merger with Microsoft took place and the threat of regulatory action that would force the companies to divest those assets.

Sources said that Yahoo wants a large cushion in case the government finds the combination of Yahoo Mail and Hotmail too much.

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