Although it’s not news that Yahoo was readying a new version of its homepage and has spent a lot of time doing so–in fact, it’s gone all Handy Manny with a whole lot of test renovations–the Internet giant begins the massive rollout of it tomorrow.

The official launch of what was code-named “Metro,” which Yahoo had previously said was coming in the fall, will take place on an opt-in “beta” basis for the hundreds of millions of users in the U.S. and will be extended to France, the U.K. and India later this week.

The change is an important one for Yahoo, since its front page–one of the most trafficked on the Web–is perhaps its most powerful calling card to users and advertisers, as well as to Wall Street.

Here are the details and also an interview about it all with Yahoo SVP Tapan Bhat, as well as screenshots of the new page.

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In early discussions that began in the last several weeks that apparently included a face-to-face meeting last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are finally talking about search and also advertising partnerships the companies could possibly strike, said several sources with knowledge of the situation.

According to a variety of sources, the talks between the pair and other execs at both companies are preliminary and wide-ranging, focused on what kind of commercial relationship Yahoo and Microsoft could have in the future.

But, cautioned sources close to Yahoo, the discussions are not about a renewed acquisition attempt by Microsoft and also might not result in any deal.

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Here’s a video interview I did with top Yahoo execs Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel yesterday, after Yahoo finally launched a lot of the new open and social elements that it has long said it was injecting into its most popular products. The initiatives Yahoo finally released into the wild have been long in the making, first discussed as just vaporware by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Now, after the longest of gestation periods, they arrived yesterday, in an impressive rollout.

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Yesterday, Yahoo held a San Francisco event where it finally launched a lot of the new open and social elements that it has long said it was injecting into its most popular products.

(BoomTown also interviewed top Yahoo execs Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel about the moves.)

For a look-see, here is an official Yahoo video about the launch and some screenshots of the changes.

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While rumors of its impending re-sale have apparently been greatly exaggerated, what’s true about StumbleUpon is that its new Web-centric look and feel and a new partnering program represent a major shift for the online discovery service.

The San Francisco-based company, which was founded in 2001 and sold to eBay last year for $75 million, is announcing tonight that users will no longer have to register or download its toolbar to “stumble” the Web.

The move is being made because most Internet users are increasingly loath to install Web plug-ins, a requirement that naturally has slowed the growth of StumbleUpon’s service.

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