Google and Yahoo have reduced the scope of their proposed search-advertising deal in an effort to win U.S. Justice Department approval, report the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, citing anonymous sources. Last week, it appeared as if Google might walk away.  It's not clear if any changes would address Microsoft's assertion that the deal puts too much of the market under Google's control.

Here's how Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff compares his company to Microsoft, according to VentureBeat: "They hate everybody and we love everybody, and that’s pretty much the difference. We even love Microsoft. … This is our core strategy, love.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at a business gathering in South Korea, says it's important to continue investing for growth during an economic downturn.

Apparently many of Microsoft's top execs vote absentee, because it's not just Ballmer who's overseas this week. Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, is in Europe meeting with government officials, students and industry partners, according to the company. Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, is in China for Microsoft Research events. Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, has meetings in Saudi Arabia, Romania, Hungary and Finland this week.

Yahoo hired a Microsoft executive, MSN veteran Jeff Dossett, as senior vice president of its U.S. "audience businesses."  See this L.A. Times Q&A with Dossett for more details. Joanne Bradford, another former Microsoft executive, joined Yahoo in September.

Quoted: "Tell me about it. ... After the Yahoo-Microsoft dance was over, they needed to move quickly on their ad sales group, and they made her an offer she couldn't refuse. The shame is we reorganized the business the way she wanted it to run, and she left midstream." -- Nick Grouf, CEO of Spot Runner, complains to ValleyWag about Bradford's short tenure at his company, which just announced layoffs.

Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft ranks Windows 7 features most likely to affect app compatibility.

Quoted II: "I've seen a real shift for the better in the way people are approaching UI design within the company.  No longer is it an afterthought – it’s baked into the product development cycle at almost every level, and people are paying particular attention to the way our software makes people feel.  It’s fun to watch (and certainly has something to do with ramped up competition with Apple)." -- Microsoft's Mike Torres, making the case for recent user-experience improvements in Microsoft's biggest products.