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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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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Yesterday, BoomTown paid a visit to the Washington, D.C., office of Facebook to meet its reps in the nation’s capital.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the social networking site has a very small staff–for now, just a trio of on-the-young-side dudes–battening down the hatches from a funky office in a funky section of D.C., Dupont Circle, far from the tonier and lobbyist-rich K Street corridor.

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For a long time now, it has been Microsoft constantly raiding the Yahoo talent pool, as one top tech exec after another has left its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ to join the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.

Well, turnabout is fair play for Yahoo, as it nabs a top Microsoft ad exec.

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The former head of Google Health, Adam Bosworth, officially unveiled his much anticipated health-care start-up today at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco, showing off a site that will offer step-by-step and personalized “care plans,” as well as many kinds of online tools to better understand the data and tips on how to stay healthy.

It’s perfect timing, given the health-care debate now raging in Washington, which is about how people make health-care decisions–or, more precisely, how they usually do not.

Here’s a video interview with Bosworth.

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Way back in the fall of 2001, BoomTown attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer.

It is an obsession he has never given up.

So it is ironic that all the hype has suddenly and firmly coalesced around the particulars of the tablet that Apple has developed–a device being spearheaded by CEO Steve Jobs and likely to arrive in the coming months.

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Last week, a cougar was reported to be roaming on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft.

Here’s an image the very fine global alert from Microsoft Global Security first sent last week, which assured employees of the software giant that “Microsoft Security will conduct frequent patrols of all wooded areas of the campus.”

That’s more than you can say about how the software giant handles hackers!

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If you want to get Hollywood movie studio types irked, mention Google. And if you want them steamed, bringing up Netflix will usually work.

But if you want to see the tops of their heads blow off, Redbox is just the ticket.

Except not to their movies, it seems, if the major movie studio execs have their way in an ever-growing legal battle with the DVD-rental kiosk company.

A typical consumer named Louie Swisher, though, begs to differ.

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BoomTown just got this interesting memo that Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele sent out to her staff immediately in the wake of the deal for Microsoft to take over Yahoo’s search technology business two weeks ago.

I render it unto you, dear readers, since it shows just how intent the top managers of Yahoo are, especially internally, in reassuring those concerned that Yahoo had not just gutted itself and how it would remain as innovative as ever.

Also amusing–for reasons I cannot understand since it is an internal memo–is the use of the code name for Yahoo, which is called Yale, after the famous university in New Haven, Conn.

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After all the investor hubbub over the oh-no-they-didn’t deal between Yahoo and Microsoft starts to die down a bit, the pair are now embarking on the path that is the only way toward proving the efficacy of them joining together.

That would be getting a variety of state, federal and international regulators to say yes to the wide-ranging online advertising and search arrangement they announced last week so they can start making it work.

According to sources at both companies, a variety of filings will be made this week, including one to the Securities and Exchange Commission that should provide more details of the partnership.

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While at Microsoft HQ last week, right after the online advertising and search deal with Yahoo was struck, BoomTown interviewed a passel of Microsoft execs, including Online Audience Business SVP Yusuf Mehdi, who has been a key player in the many–and mostly disastrous–attempts that the software giant has made to form some sort of alliance with Yahoo over the years.

While Wall Street threw raspberries at the Silicon Valley icon for the deal, Microsoft got kudos for grabbing a large piece of share that it could use in its ongoing battle with archrival Google.

In this video interview with me, Mehdi defended it as a “win-win”–what else is he going to say?–for both Yahoo and Microsoft.

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BoomTown is spending the day at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Wash., interviewing a passel of execs about the Yahoo online advertising and search partnership.

But, while here, I have not been able to resist trotting out this very funny puppet video by 1938 Media of sweat-stained Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gone wild, screaming about how he smoked the Yahoo partnership, to every Softie I see.

Because I am that sensitive.

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Isn’t it ironic that Yahoo once employed–and for a very long time–top search techie Qi Lu and here he was on stage at the Financial Analyst Meeting at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Wash., after having just scooped up that business for the software giant.

Lu, who is now president of the Online Services division at Microsoft, was not generous with the details, although he did say making the partnership work was his No. 2 priority after Microsoft’s own search business.

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