Google Inc. Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2012 Results  —  Google Inc. reported consolidated revenues of $14.42 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2012.  Consolidated revenues would have been $15.24 billion had Motorola Home been included.

Announcing the Firefox OS Developer Preview Phone!  —  Firefox OS is a new mobile operating system built entirely using open web standards.  In Firefox OS, HTML5 apps can do “phone things” - they can make the phone vibrate, make a phone call or send a text message.

Microsoft Grows Surface Family  —  Announces Surface Windows 8 Pro availability, market expansion and new accessories.  —  Microsoft Corp. today announced that its Surface family of PCs is growing.  Its newest model — Surface Windows 8 Pro — will be available for purchase on Feb. 9 …

Apple Pulls 500px's Mobile Apps From The App Store, Claiming It's Too Easy To Search For Nude Photos  —  Toronto photo-sharing startup 500px is reporting today that both of its applications, 500px for iOS and its recent acquisition ISO500, have been pulled from the Apple App Store due to concerns about nude photos.

Microsoft Might Kick In $1-$3 Billion To Help With The Dell Buy Out  —  Microsoft is in talks to participate in the deal to take Dell private, CNBC's David Faber reports.  According to his sources, Microsoft might invest $1-$3 billion with the group looking to take Dell private.

Yahoo Poised to Acquire Content Curation Site Snip.it  —  Marissa Mayer's Yahoo is in the process of acquiring a startup to help its efforts to become a destination for content.  —  Yahoo is expected to announce this week that it has acquired Snip.it, a Pinterest-like site for article curation …

Verizon Q4 loss doubles, pushed by Sandy, pension costs  —  The telecommunications provider saw revenue rise nearly 6 percent on strong customer growth in the wireless business.  —  Superstorm Sandy and mounting pension costs took a toll on Verizon.  —  The New York telecommunications provider posted …

As Obama heads back to office, a battle rages over the tech that got him reelected  —  Programmers and politicians spar over sharing the campaign-winning code with the public  —  The tech team behind the 2012 Obama campaign has probably received more attention than any political programmers in history.

A close look at how Oracle installs deceptive software with Java updates  —  Summary: Oracle's Java plugin for browsers is a notoriously insecure product.  Over the past 18 months, the company has released 11 updates, six of them containing critical security fixes.

An update to embedded Tweets  —  Tweets bring you closer to what's happening around the world, from breaking news to global conversations.  With embedded Tweets, you can see and interact with Tweets across the web.  We often embed Tweets here on our blog to highlight great Tweets …

AMD hires former Apple, Qualcomm senior engineers  —  Summary: With all the major PC players looking to diversify beyond desktops, notebooks, and servers, AMD has hired two engineers who both used to work at the company before moving on to Apple and Qualcomm.  —  Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Etsy Acquires Mixel for Mobile Team  —  Craft marketplace Etsy has acquired mobile photo app maker Mixel as part of its efforts to beef up native mobile app development.  —  Mixel launched in November 2011 as a hyped collage creation app for the iPad, and later pivoted to be more of a simple photo manipulation tool for the iPhone.

A word on cryptography  —  The cloud storage market is dominated by players that do not take advantage of cryptography beyond HTTPS and server-side encryption.  Since we set out to improve this rather dissatisfying situation three days ago, some news outlets have made attempts to dismantle our crypto architecture.

The Happiness Machine How Google became such a great place to work  —  A cube at Google's global headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.  —  Courtesy Google.  —  A few years ago, Google's human resources department noticed a problem: A lot of women were leaving the company.

Hot email app Mailbox launches reservation system to handle demand, arrives for free in a few weeks  —  Mailbox, an app that is attempting to change the way that we manage our inboxes, has managed to garner a significant amount of hype over the past few weeks.

Not-So-Ephemeral Messaging: New SnapChat “Hack” Lets Users Save Photos Forever  —  Even as SnapChat leaves tech reporters and people over 25 scratching their heads — is it the next Instagram, or a massive sexting conspiracy? — the app has succeeded in bringing ephemeral (or self-destructive …

Employers' Social Media Policies Come Under Regulatory Scrutiny  —  As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.