2012 Update from the CEO  —  Velocity, execution and focus Sergey and I founded Google because we believed that building a great search experience would improve people's lives and, hopefully, the world.  And in the decade-plus that's followed, we've been constantly delighted by the ways …

Shutting down spammers  —  Twitter continues to grow at a record pace — we now have 140 million active users and more than 340 million Tweets each day.  As our reach expands, we become a more attractive target for spammers.  While spam is a small fraction of the incredible content you can find on Twitter …

Facebook Picks Nasdaq for I.P.O.  —  Facebook, which is preparing for its highly anticipated initial public offering, has picked a home.  —  The social network will list its shares on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “FB,” according a person familiar with the matter, who demanded anonymity because the discussions were private.

Exclusive: Yahoo's Chief Product Officer Blake Irving Resigns  —  According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo's Chief Product Officer Blake Irving has turned in his resignation and it has been accepted by the company.  —  The process for Irving's departure is a bit more formal since …

Apple's Highest Priority Is Obviousness  —  Good piece from Sebastiaan de With, riffing on my bit last week regarding the tension between simplicity and obviousness.  But I gently disagree with this: … Apple has started using gestures more widely, but they're not requiring them.

Android Device Makers Are Mutinying, Says Insider  —  Amazon showed device makers that they don't need Google to succeed.  —  Google's Android device makers aren't happy.  They're tired of making commodity devices that are merely vehicles for Google's Android OS, each indistinguishable …

Security hole exposes Android, iOS to Facebook identity theft  —  Summary: A new security vulnerability discovered in Facebook for Android and Facebook for iOS means your Facebook identity can be stolen if you use an Android phone, Android tablet, iPhone, and/or iPad.

Jobs's Biographer to Page: What Part of “I'm Going to Destroy Android” Didn't You Understand?  —  Google CEO Larry Page's revisionist approach to Steve Jobs's infamous ire over the company's Android operating system isn't sitting well with the late Apple CEO's biographer, Walter Isaacson.

Wall Street Examines Fine Print in a Bill for Start-Ups  —  Wall Street is examining whether it will benefit from a little-known section of a broad new law that President Obama is expected to sign on Thursday.  —  Provisions tucked into the so-called JOBS Act, or the Jumpstart Our Business Startups …

Actually, Arianna Huffington Has Been Demoted  —  Despite a story in today's New York Times headlined: “Huffington Gains More Control in AOL Revamping,” Arianna Huffington has in recent weeks seen a “narrowing” of her job at AOL, a source close to AOL tells us.

Bragging rights go to Apple as per-share price now tops Google  —  If you're keeping score — and who doesn't these days? — it now costs more to buy a share of Apple than to purchase a share of Google.  —  To be sure, this is more about bragging rights than anything else as the market capitalization …

Spotify's subscriber growth disappoints  —  Spotify's US performance has been less than rocking, according to sources who say the digital music service has been under-delivering in terms of subscribers.  —  It has been nine months since Spotify debuted in the US and was hailed as a coming music revolution …

Samsung: We're still not into 3D smartphones  —  By now you may have already seen a handful of “leaks” on Samsung's imminent Galaxy S III, but if you ask us, they all smell like a cruel prank on anticipating fans.  As far as we're concerned, the only reliable tidbits so far are the GT-i9300 …

Red Hat, IBM sign on for OpenStack  —  Two tech powers — IBM and Red Hat — are ready to officially bless OpenStack's open source cloud project.  —  The news — which should come next week or the week after at the OpenStack Spring Conference — is a big boost to OpenStack …

Google Launches Android App To Improve Its Indoor Location Accuracy  —  Google Maps, Bing Maps and a number of startups have been offering indoor maps for large venues like airports, malls and stadiums for quite a while.  The problem with indoor mapping, though, is that it's pretty hard …

Wikipedia's Mobile Apps Drop Google Maps for OpenStreetMap  —  In the world of online mapping, it feels like things aren't quite going in Google's direction these days: Apple switched away from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap when it launched iPhoto for iOS.  Foursquare, too, announced …

Next-gen Chromebooks built on faster Ivy Bridge chips?  —  It looks like Google will fulfill its promise of faster Chromebooks by using Intel's Sandy Bridge and imminent Ivy Bridge processors, a big step up from the current Atom-based products.  —  Chromebooks run Google's Chrome OS …

Stolen Samsung AMOLED technology sold to rival, 11 suspects arrested  —  Nearly a dozen suspects have been arrested and charged with crimes related to the theft and sale of AMOLED display technology under development at Samsung.  Yonhap News Agency on Thursday reported that 11 suspects either currently …

Controversial ‘Girls Around Me’ app scrapped after outcry  —  The Russian company behind the controversial Girls Around Me mobile application that allowed users to track the locations of nearby women pulled its funding on Thursday after an outcry from privacy advocates.

Keeping Instagram up with over a million new users in twelve hours  —  On Tuesday we launched Instagram for Android, and it's had a fantastic response so far.  The last few weeks (on the infrastructure side) have been all about capacity planning and preparation to get everything in place …

BlackBerry Maker Loses More Senior Executives  —  A number of senior-level executives at BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. have left the company in recent days amid a broad review of the company's strategic options, according to people close to the firm.