Poor Google! The company's Chinese expansion hasn't been easy: they've been shamed for giving into government censors and continue to play second-fiddle to a state-supported competitor. And now they've lost their regional leader. What will become of the company?

Chairman Bill Gates famously cursed out Microsoft programmers. CEO Steve Ballmer screams and throws chairs. But online chief Qi Lu is as subtle as he is lethal, a corporate terminator who will hunt Google endlessly until it is dead.

Microsoft convenes regular "Screw Google" meetings on Capitol Hill, Daily Finance reports, as part of an effort to tear down rival Google's image. Who would want to help Microsoft do this? The better question is who wouldn't?

Microsoft has restored a black businessman to its Polish website and offered "sincere apologies" for replacing him with a grinning white guy, using Photoshop MS Paint.

If you speak English, Microsoft's IT tools will please your entire, diverse staff, including that nice, dark-skinned gentleman with the laptop. If you speak Polish, don't worry about that guy! Photoshop can un-diversify your board room.

In September, Yahoo touted Firefox to Internet Explorer users as a "safer" browser. Now it's doing just the opposite. Funny what an innocent little "search agreement" can do to one's perception of the world. [TechCrunch]

[via AllThingsD]

Facebook obsessives were atwitter last night about a "Lite" new version of the social network, which strips away much of its ballooning trove of information. Wait, how did Facebook get so cluttered in the first place?

• Détente? The feuding between Fox News and MSNBC has grown so fierce that News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch and GE's Jeff Immelt met up recently "to figure out how to defuse tensions between the two channels." [LAT]
• The Boston Globe reports that two groups of investors have submitted preliminary bids to buy the newspaper from the New York Times Co. [AP]
• Breathe easy: Oprah has not been harmed. The suspicious package outside Winfrey's Harpo Studios this morning turned out to be harmless. [AP]
• All that idiocy on Lou Dobbs' part over the past couple of weeks hasn't done much to boost his ratings on CNN. His numbers continue to fall. [NYO]
• Those McKinsey consultants are paying off! Editors at Condé Nast were told yesterday they'll no longer be reimbursed for newspapers. [Daily Intel]

Today's deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is officially a partnership. But the 10-year search deal, assuming it clears regulators, inevitably ends one way: With Yahoo's annihilation.

After a failed romance last year, tears; then fighting and the nastiness; followed by a slow, painful reconciliation starting earlier this year. Yahoo and Microsoft have finally — finally — united with an advertising deal, All Things D reports.

Microsoft got some good press after rival Apple demanded it stop running certain TV ads. Now the software company is getting more PR buzz by caving in to the demands. Savvy!

Microsoft has long been prickly about Apple's inspired "Get a Mac" ad campaign; Chairman Bill Gates once accused Apple of "lying" with the TV spots. Now the tables have turned, and Microsoft is unabashedly gleeful to get under Apple's skin.

Mark Zuckerberg was photographed in intimate conversation with Microsoft's former CTO in Sun Valley last week. The Facebook founder might simply have been quizzing Nathan Myhrvold about Zuckerberg doppelgänger Bill Gates. But there's a more interesting possibility.

David Pogue, the Times' tech reviewer, says Bing is better than Google "in many ways."

The tech world is atwitter: Google just announced a new operating system, which will compete with Microsoft Windows. The only problem? It's not a new operating system, and it doesn't compete with Microsoft Windows.

The spots did not come from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Microsoft's edgy ad agency of record. Instead, they were from an agency called Bradley & Montgomery. And they were directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. Who said earlier this month:

The ad attempts to sell the new Internet Explorer Web browser on a simple premise: Your husband is probably looking at truly disgusting things on the internet, and this product will help him hide those things, from you.

Think these screenshots of Microsoft's Bing search engine and travel website Kayak look similar? So does Kayak, and an independent software-copyright attorney contacted by GigaOm. Can you tell which is which?

It's one thing for little nonprofit groups like Consumer Watchdog to hound Google for how it handles privacy and competitors. Much trickier for the company: A large corporation like Microsoft, can afford to whisper in reporters' ears, individually.