Now that we know what Yahoo! Axis is, and that it’s a pretty good product from what I can tell so far, there’s a huge winner.

That winner? Microsoft’s search engine Bing. Since the desktop version of Yahoo! Axis is simply a browser extension, that means that Yahoo’s search deal with Bing drops its search box on top of whatever page you’re on.

Instead of building its own desktop browser, which would have taken quite a long time and been a nightmare to support, Yahoo! decided to skip all of that and slip in the backdoor, by making itself extremely prominent.

If, and it’s a big if, Axis can grab a sizeable userbase, then Microsoft Bing just scored itself a whole slew of new search users.

Say I’m hooked on Axis, use its iPhone and iPad apps, I dig on its homepage. Then I visit Google.com. I’m presented with an alternative search option, Bing:

The search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! was made on July 29, 2009, and nearly three years later, Microsoft just got Christmas in July a few months early.

Combine Axis with its newly introduced redesign and Bing’s not having a bad month. Can Bing pick up a considerable amount of ground on Google’s search dominance? Only time will tell.

Today at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft’s Bing launched a massive redesign of its services, bringing in a grip of partners to form a new threat to Google’s crown as the search king.

Bing has always been the second city of search. An engine that was Google’s foil, but not one that had managed to drain Google’s fat market share, earned through years of high-quality service and powerful results. Today, Bing launched a fresh offensive against Google’s position atop the market.

First up: This stuff will be rolling out in the next few weeks, so if you can’t see the new design, head here for an early peek. Now, here’s what Bing is up to, in three simple explanations, to explain what it is calling its ‘three columns.’ Ready? Let’s go:

Column 1: Standard

Bing will continue its standard results in its ‘first’ column. Bing has fought for years to make its core results meet Google’s head on. If you have, or haven’t used Bing, this method is nothing short of fighting the giant. Google is boss in search, and what Bing is doing is trying to beat it at its own game.

This form of Bing is the results that you know or don’t, but if you have used Bing, this is what you likely are familiar with already.

Column 2: Snapshot

This is the new action column. Fusing results from OpenTable, FanSnap, and Yelp, if you are looking to get something done, this is your new friend, provided you find it superior to Google.

Remember Bing’s call to be the ‘decision engine’? This is the final thought of that: what you need, where you need it. Now, it’s up to you to test, but the idea is that this is your conduit to completing tasks now.

Column 3: Social

Bing has for some time worked to integrate social elements into serach. My personal friends, looking at my Facebook NewsFeed are all idiots, but for those of us with better cohorts, this is for you.

Here, Bing is going to bring in results from Quora, Facebook, and Twitter and Foursquare and others. The idea here is that Bing takes in your networks that you are have built, your social graph, and makes it relevant as you search. Also, the product will take in ‘experts’ from around the web to make sure that you have proper human guidance, write large.

Synthesis: A step forward

Bing’s news today is a step in the right direction. The engine is looking to change the way search works, and at the same time shift how people actually use search. What the engine announced today is a real shift in how Bing works; this is how it plans to win.

TNW’s take is this: Bing could be turning over a new leaf, and forging a new path forward. Beating Google with what Bing had built before may not have been possible, but by doing this, bringing in other resources for context, Bing could be making a new stab at what comes next.

The question is simple: if this is brilliant for Bing, will it drive traffic? Will this new redesign put it in a position to syphon traffic from Google itself? It certainly can’t hurt, so I expect the company to continue its momentum. As we test this, more thoughts will follow. For now, this is a good move.

And for fun, here’s the new product in action:

Tune in below and keep an eye out for full coverage:

Over on the Microsoft Advertising adCenter blog, Microsoft’s EMEA Marketing lead Cedric Chambaz has announced that the search alliance between the software giant and ailing Internet services pioneer Yahoo is entering the last stage of its implementation in UK, France and Ireland, starting on the 18th of April 2012.

This transition was estimated to be completed by the end of April, so it looks like the companies are right on schedule this time around. Nevertheless, it took them long enough to actually start with the implementation in Europe – nearly 3 years after the alliance between the two tech giants was officially confirmed.

Today’s announcement comes a few weeks after Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo opened its display advertising pact for business.

The idea behind the search alliance, announced in July 2009, is to combine Bing and Yahoo Search audiences on a single global platform, the recently upgraded Microsoft Advertising adCenter, in order to more efficiently compete against search market leader Google, who is still the undisputed king of the hill.

Bing and Yahoo audiences have already been ‘combined’ in North America (October 2010) and India (September 2011) – though it wasn’t a roaring success – and Microsoft says it is poised to move ahead with the transition in additional markets in the coming months, more specifically in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Starting on 18 April 2012, adCenter ads will gradually starting getting displayed on Yahoo Search result pages in the UK, France and Ireland. By the end of this month, Microsoft says 100 percent of the Yahoo traffic will be made available in adCenter, while Yahoo Search Marketing accounts will go into ‘read-only mode’.

The company is urging advertisers to transition to Microsoft Advertising adCenter as soon as possible, and points out those with Yahoo Search Marketing accounts can do so under the adCenter tab in their profiles.

Microsoft is also cheekily suggesting that they increase their ad budgets to “prepare for the increased traffic once Yahoo Search traffic ramps” up, and to increase their keyword bids to “prepare for increased competition from the new advertisers”.

Whether advertisers in the UK, Ireland and France will be happy with this transition remains to be seen. So far, the search pact between Yahoo and Microsoft hasn’t exactly managed to alter the power balance in the search advertising market.

As always, we’d love to hear from advertisers directly.

According to comScore figures, Microsoft and Yahoo together deliver 6 billion monthly searches and have a 30% search share, combined, in the United States.

When it comes to searching for things on the web, everyone goes about it in a different way. For example, I still know people who search for “YouTube” on Google instead of typing ‘www.YouTube.com’ into their search bar. Crazy, right?

Data analytics firm Chitika did some interesting research into how many words users type to perform searches on the top five search engines.

The search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL. Chitika found that Ask.com users tend to type in the most words when searching, while AOL users type the least. The graph below is based on search engine traffic this month from North America.

It’s likely that the wordiness of Ask users are due to the fact that the site wants you to ask questions in natural language format, but this study is interesting none the less.

With most search engines providing auto-completion in their searchbox, it will be interesting to see if the total number of words people perform each search with drops, since the suggestions will override their natural predilection of being verbose.

Companies are taking a fresh look at older technologies and putting a prettier user experience on top of it. Flipboard is a perfect example of this, letting you read what your Facebook and Twitter friends post in a magazine style page-flipping experience.

heystaks wants to do just that for your Google and Bing search results. Available for both iOS and Android devices, heystaks does a beautiful job at giving you an experience that makes you want to check out more search results than you might on a regular Google search results page. You can sign up with your Facebook account, and your searches and tapped results are saved with your heystaks account.

Flip through search results

heystaks gives you a regular search box, but shows results split between Google and Bing. You can flip through the results and tap on the one you’d like to read, while keeping the other results at the bottom of the app. It’s a wonderful design, and solves the problem of clicking away from a Google result and never coming back.

You can add tags to any given search result, allowing the community to find the content easily as well.

Creating “staks” and sharing

You can create “staks”, which are shared search topics. These can be made public or private, and watching the public stak stream is pretty interesting. A public stream can be shared or seen of all of the results you’ve clicked on. The only downside of heystaks is that the sharing option for singular results is via email. Sharing a result via Twitter or Facebook would make me use this app more, but this is something the company can add without much effort.

Getting the most out of search results is something that Google is attempting by integrating the +1 information it’s collecting, to show you results that may interest you more. There are Google Labs items that let you see previews of results, but heystaks gives you a really nice mobile interface, while giving you results from both Google and Bing. It’s free and worth a look.

It is uncertain whether the controversy surrounding Noel Biderman is hindering or boosting his success. Would ashleymadison.com — the site Biderman created to connect people who want to cheat on their spouses — have nearly as many users if pundits like Fox’s Sean Hannity hadn’t spent a significant portion of his show lambasting Biderman as an immoral businessman?

Launched in 2001, the company has garnered hundreds of press mentions, most of which address the ethics of running a company that encourages infidelity. Biderman is the first to admit that these articles have done much to fuel his user base, creating a brand awareness that few PR agencies could emulate. But with that controversy has come roadblocks.

The Atlantic recently reported that major advertising networks — including Facebook, Google, Bing, and YouTube — have blocked Biderman from advertising ashleymadison.com and some of his other related companies on their sites. Though Biderman is able to buy keywords on Google Adwords, he’s blocked from the search giant’s large Adsense network; on several other networks he’s shut off completely. This means he couldn’t bid for the search phrase “how to cheat on your spouse” on Bing no matter how much he’s willing to pay. Nor could he buy keyword ads for the multiple trademarks he owns, including the phrase, “Life is short. Have an affair.”

A quick look at the Alexa rankings of these websites shows that Biderman has been effectively closed off from reaching an incredibly large group of potential customers. During phone interviews with me and other reporters he has cast himself as a businessman who is being unfairly punished. He alleges that these major online platforms have singled him out and they’re prudishly attempting to block people from carrying out an act (infidelity) that they’d be doing anyway.

But I couldn’t help but wonder whether the benefits of the controversy (the press mentions and ensuing discussion) outweigh the costs (the ad network banning). If Biderman hadn’t appeared on Hannity, The View, and several other major media outlets, he may have easily escaped under Facebook’s radar and avoided a banning. But then would the site be as successful as it is today, generating 12 million visitors a month?

“If I were treated fairly and allowed to advertise like any other dating service, I have no doubt that my growth rate would probably double from the rate it currently is,” he told me in a phone interview.

He argued that the press mentions, while helpful in boosting traffic, only create temporary increases in visitors, whereas networks like Facebook allow a sustained advertising platform that isn’t beholden to cyclical press coverage. For Biderman, the worth of appearing on Sean Hannity’s show is finite and short lived, unlike being able to plaster contextual Adsense ads next to articles and blog posts about infidelity.

So how does he overcome this? One way, he said, is through affiliate advertising. “There are a lot of bright individuals out there who have lots of traffic through their own domains who can find a way to bring you an audience, you just have to be prepared to share revenue with them,” Biderman said. “Google has the entire grip on the search engine market, but people go a lot of other places where my audience might fit. They might be writing articles about affairs. They might be resources that people use to find other cathartic outlets. Those are huge traffic sources, and they too can help you circumvent those obstacles.”

The websites he advertises on include gaming, sports fantasy, and even porn websites. “You can look at the New York Times, the Washington Post — they won’t have one-tenth the traffic that YouPorn will have tomorrow.”

Though Biderman has certainly benefited from the controversy he created, he asserted that most sites banned from these networks don’t receive the kind of coverage he does. “Would the average company be able to recover given all the hurdles I’ve described?” he asked. “I doubt it, I highly highly doubt it. I managed to make it, but I have a different story. How many of those other companies do you know who are on the cover of Business Week or were on Larry King or The View or Howard Stern?”

And lest you think Biderman is simply complaining about these ad blockages to generate more controversy and press coverage, consider this: in the Atlantic article, it’s reported that the business owner has attempted to distance several of his other dating websites from ashleymadison.com, fearing that Facebook, Google, Bing and other networks will lump them into their blocked lists. Banning them along with the infidelity website, he believes, may spell their financial failure.