Google’s earnings reports showed that the company’s mobile division continues to contribute to revenue. Mobile search may make Google as much as $2.5 billion this year, but analysts have questioned where the portable version of the search engine will fall in the company’s revenue stream long-term. READ MORE
Qrank, a company that develops games that make use of social media, will come off its seed round of funding this week a little stronger for having scored an investment from early Twitter VP Jason Goldman. Goldman was one of five investors involved in the funding round, which raised $350,000. READ MORE
In what seems to have been meant as an internal note, a Google engineer gave an unfiltered opinion of Google+ the other day. Steve Yegge, the Google engineer in question, made public a post on the Google social networking site in which he described the site as “a pathetic afterthought.” READ MORE
Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform, announced yesterday that it has launched projects with the support of one million backers who have pledged more than $100 million to a variety of causes. On Kickstarter, users post projects and set fundraising goals through a specialized web page. People who want to support a project can go to that page to make a donation. The company has been active for two and a half years. READ MORE
More careful analysis of the repercussions of spinning off its personal computer division has led Hewlett-Packard to reconsider its decision in recent weeks. Meg Whitman, who took the reins at HP from Leo Apotheker, has yet to make a decision along with the company’s board as to whether or not they’ll be following her predecessor’s plan. READ MORE
18 months after the first Apple tablet was launched, Facebook has released its mobile application for the tablet. The app is similar to the social network’s existing iPhone app, and enables users to use the device’s touch screen display to flip through photos and post messages. READ MORE
Google picked up minor social analytics player SocialGrapple, a Twitter analytics tool that generates charts and graphs reflecting data gathered on a user’s online presence. Google has confirmed that SocialGrapple’s team, including founder Andrey Petrov, will be joining the company. READ MORE
Some major or once-major technology companies may be up for grabs. Yahoo, Research in Motion, and Hewlett-Packard, and a number of other companies have fallen on hard times. As the tech industry goes through another of its tumultuous periods, here are three companies to keep an eye on. READ MORE
Apple may have plans to launch mobile application rentals for iOS, bloggers at Tech Erra claim after digging through lines of iTunes 10.5 beta 9 code. Certain lines of code seem to suggest that the company has plans to create apps that would delete themselves at the end of a rental period, the bloggers wrote. “Apps are automatically removed from your iTunes library at the end of the rental period,” read one pop-up warning. READ MORE
Finnish cellphone maker Nokia will be eliminating 3,500 jobs, or approximately 6 percent of its workforce, the company announced Thursday. This wave of lay-offs, the second this year for the company, sent the company’s stock up two percent. Nokia executives described the layoffs as a streamlining measure to make the company better able to meet customer demand. READ MORE
