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Microsoft and Facebook have ended their advertising deal in which the software giant sold display ads on the social network, while at the same time expanding their search relationship. The announcement comes as a major Facebook redesign is being rolled out gradually to users.

Microsoft will continue to sell search advertising for Facebook, but the social network will take over the selling of its own display advertisements in the US (it began taking over international sales in the last few months). Microsoft said this was a “mutual decision” since “it just made more sense” for Facebook to lead its own advertising strategy. Nevertheless, it’s hard to believe the company is happy about losing the advertising section of its partnership, although banner ads weren’t doing so well on the site anyway. In fact, Facebook stopped running traditional banner ads altogether when it launched the new design and instead is focusing on selling social campaign display ads.

Meanwhile, Bing will continue to be the social network’s exclusive Web-search partner, and that exclusivity will soon go beyond US borders. Facebook users will also get access to more Bing search engine features, Microsoft said, describing it as “a more complete search experience” with “full access to great Bing features beyond a set of links.”

Microsoft says users will see Bing updates to Facebook roll out over the coming weeks and months. Four months ago, Microsoft announced a global partnership with Facebook that would bring the social site’s status updates to Bing search results, and while the company touched upon that again, it did not give a specific date for when to expect those improvements.

Yahoo’s board of directors is meeting tonight over Microsoft search partnership — The Wall Street Journal reports that another meeting over a potential search advertising partnership happened today.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for erasing customers’ e-books — Last week, the company remotely deleted copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 from the Kindles of customers to whom Amazon had accidentally sold copies to which Amazon didn’t have e-rights. Bezos said at the start of the company’s earnings call, “Our solution to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” TechCrunch has more context on the story.

The Associated Press creates a news registry to protect its content — The AP has struggled to find a way to prevent its oh-so-usable reporting from being run for free by websites. “The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used,” says the AP’s report on itself.

Autodesk offers free training for unemployed potential designers — The Autodesk Assistance Program offers free training in Autodesks’s AutoCAD, Revit, AutoDesk Inventor Professional, and AutoCAD Civil 3D software, all of which are industry standard tools for 2D and 3D design professionals. There’s also a discount on these pricey programs for employers who hire people who’ve completed the . Autodesk’s website explains the details.

Google announces comics-based custom themes — Peanuts, Batman, Iron Man, Superman, Transmetropolitan, Garfield, Popeye, Renee French, Hellboy, Ziggy, TOKYOPOP, and another 40 themes for Google are now available for iGoogle members. The company licensed the images so that users can have them for free, but it’s a clever hook to get users to login as iGoogle users. Google search princess Marissa Mayer blogs about the new themes.

The New York Times swept Knight-Batten awards for innovations in journalism — The Gray Lady’s quaterly profits dropped 42 percent from last year, but the paper dominate this year’s prestigious Knight-Battens. A half dozen NYT newsroom and technology department projects, from the Times’ Document Reader for posting documents that go with a story, to Living with Less, a series of video and audio portraits of how the current recession has affected people, were deemed “excellent, innovative journalism, news and information” by the Knight Foundation.