Here are the columns and news stories for the week of Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, as reported by the Search Engine Watch team of experts.

News broke yesterday that Microsoft was suing Motorola for Android-related patent infringements. Microsoft said in a blog post that its patents cover a range of software functions used by Android devices (presumably this would apply to the iPhone as well): The Microsoft innovations at issue in this case help make smartphones “smart.”  Indeed, our patents *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***

Bing’s answer to Google Trends, xRank, is officially no more.  The search service that was launched in 2007 has been on the back-burner, so to speak, since Microsoft Live Search became Bing. xRank was described as “a cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not!” and highlighted what the hottest search queries of the moment are

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

Touting it’s stability, security, and speed, Google fully launched it’s URL shortener, goo.gl , yesterday.

Google has removed Street View images in Brazil that showed dead bodies on local streets.

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from September 2010: 1) What’s Up With The Google Balls Logo On The Google Homepage Today? – Visiting the Google homepage today may make you go “wow.” It has one of the most wild and explosive special Google logos I have ever seen. *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***

Bing xRank is no more. A Bing spokesperson has confirmed that the search service was recently shut down. The xRank URL, http://www.bing.com/xrank, currently redirects to the Bing home page

Earlier this week a Bloomberg/BusinessWeek article appeared under the headline: Apple Threatens Search Giants’ Mobile Ad Shares. It gained a tremendous amount of secondary pickup and discussion for the proposition that Apple had tied Google in mobile advertising revenue

Visual search engine, Quintura , announces that it has sold its patent technology to an unnamed buy for $600,000. According to CEO Yakov Sadchikov, the price is four times the amount they had initially invested in the company.