Instagram Founders Were Helped by Bay Area Connections  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Past midnight, in a dimly lighted warehouse jutting into the San Francisco Bay, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger introduced something they had been working on for weeks: a photo-sharing iPhone application called Instagram.

What Amazon's ebook strategy means  —  It seems to me that a lot of folks in the previous discussion don't really understand quite what makes Amazon so interesting—and threatening, for that matter—to the publishing industry.  —  So I'm going to take a stab at explaining.

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin  —  Exclusive: Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style ‘walled gardens’  —  The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation …

FCC Proposes $25,000 Fine on Google  —  WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission proposed a $25,000 fine on Google Inc., accusing the search giant of deliberately obstructing an investigation into whether the company violated federal rules when its street-mapping service collected …

How former Microsoft tech chief Nathan Myhrvold could have created the iPhone  —  Myhrvold's ‘consumer computer’ vision in 1991, as published by Men's Journal.  —  Nathan Myhrvold is back in the national spotlight again, but in a very different way this time.  —  Myhrvold in his chef's garb

Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher to cover Apple from 1971 to 2000, filming starts next month  —  We've got a few more details on the recently-revealed Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher, thanks to a Neowin interview with the producer, Mark Hulme.

The Mobile Paradox  —  Google's stock declined by over 4% yesterday.  Many have put this down to the company's decision to create a non-voting class of stock as part of a control-retention exercise as the founders sell shares.  But more is going on here.  In the same week as Facebook acquired Instagram …

The One Product That Makes Apple a Trillion-Dollar Company Overnight  —  Apple will become a trillion-dollar company based not on iPads and Apple TV, but payments.  —  Imagine taking out your iPhone and instead of buying Angry Birds you bought the latest Groupon.

Google Finally Gets Right To Gmail Trademark In Germany  —  When Google launched Gmail in Germany in 2005, it was quickly barred from using the Gmail name for its email product there.  German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, after all, had registered the ‘G-mail’ trademark (short for Giersch mail) …