Fans of Google Checkout and/or the idea of paying for things with your Android smartphone have reason to cheer this morning: Osama Bedier, the )former( vice president of product development at PayPal, has taken a job with a certain search giant. Details are light about what Bedier might do at Google. Nonexistent, really, so we'll be sure to provide an update if and when that info becomes available. In the meantime, though,

Artists who attend the Sundance Institute may soon have an easier time reaching an audience when they complete their programs. Facebook and Kickstarter have promised to support alumni, providing funding and guidance. Facebook's contribution is more on the "guidance" side of things. A statement on the matter explained, "Facebook will offer Institute alumni advice, educational materials, and best-practices tips on how to build and engage audiences via the service.

The people behind sites like Realtor.com, Redfin, and Trulia can breathe a sigh of relief and perhaps throw a party. They seem to have defeated Google, which announced this afternoon that it's retiring the real estate feature within Google Maps. Google Maps first began to offer a real estate search feature in mid-2008. The feature was later upgraded several times and introduced in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK,

Yesterday, Google announced that it intends to hire more than 6,000 new employees this year. Now, we're starting to learn where the search giant will put some of its workers, as word's spread that Google's leased 100,000 square feet of office space in Venice, California. Although Google hasn't yet had the chance to decorate them with fake dinosaur skeletons and full-scale rocket ship replicas,

Computer users who have learned not to submit important info online unless a "lock" icon is visible - and who've also come to fear captchas - should soon have a much-improved opinion of Facebook. Today, the social network announced secured connection and social authentication security features to address both these issues. Let's start with the secured connection option. Alex Rice, a security engineer, wrote on the Facebook Blog ,

For better or for worse, Twitter isn't yet a public company, meaning it doesn't have to deliver earnings reports the way Google and Yahoo have this quarter. But an unofficial update on the company's financial situation is available, as Sharepost has indicated that Twitter's private valuation has hit $4 billion. That's quite a milestone. Consider that AOL's market cap is only $2.58 billion and IAC's market cap is $2.86 billion right now, by comparison,

The fourth quarter of 2010 could have gone much worse for Yahoo, judging from the earnings report the company released this afternoon. Yahoo's numbers were generally higher than what analysts expected, perhaps earning Carol Bartz a few points in unhappy shareholders' eyes. A low Q1 forecast threw a long shadow, however. To first cover the fourth quarter: experts believed Yahoo would report $1.50 billion in gross revenue and $1.19 billion in net revenue. Instead,

In a few minutes, Yahoo will release an earnings report concerning the fourth quarter of 2010, but prior to that, the company's admitted that yet another round of layoffs is taking place. The number of affected individuals is probably in the neighborhood of 140. Obviously, that's not great news for those people, and it may not be a good sign for Yahoo, either. Many companies are expanding, not contracting, as the economy recovers. A related,

Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube continue to polarize corporations and people in charge of networks, judging by a new report from OpenDNS. The sites showed up on both "top blacklisted" and "top whitelisted" lists covering the entire year of 2010. If you'd like a definition of those terms, OpenDNS said in its report , "Blacklists are typically used when there is no desire to block an entire category in principle,

An experimental film project in which over 80,000 YouTube users opted to participate will soon reach far beyond computer monitors and the occasional Internet-connected TV. National Geographic has picked up the U.S. distribution rights to Life in a Day , ensuring a theatrical release. To perhaps refresh your memory: Life in a Day is the Ridley Scott-backed project that revolved around YouTube users submitting videos of their activities.

Anyone concerned that Google's growth will slow under Larry Page can probably at least put aside those fears with respect to the company's headcount. Outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt announced today that Google intends to hire 1,000 people in Europe alone. According to Robin Wauters , Schmidt said at the DLD )Digital Life Design( Conference in Germany, "Our businesses are doing very well around the globe, and as a result I'm happy to announce we'll be adding 1,

A currency - whether real or virtual - is only as good as the extent to which it's accepted. So to increase the value of Facebook Credits )figuratively speaking(, Facebook will soon make them a mandatory option in social games that use payments. Users and developers shouldn't react with too much dismay. Other in-game currencies will be still be permitted, and Facebook intends to let developers keep 70 percent of the revenue from transactions that involve Facebook Credits.

Let's face it: smartphone adoption isn't close to universal, and the average non-student probably doesn't print documents on a regular basis. But today, Google launched Google Cloud Print for mobile documents and Gmail for mobile, an interesting service that introduces new options concerning when and where people can print. Google's billing this as "a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers.

Sometimes, Google pulls out all the figurative stops when making an announcement, calling news conferences, issuing press releases, and putting notices on Google.com. Today, there's a blog post and a site-specific doodle to celebrate the seventh birthday of Orkut. The post on the Orkut Blog stated, "Today marks orkut's 7th birthday, so to celebrate, we released a new doodle in orkut. We'd like to thank our users,

Twitter's efforts to generate ad revenue will kick into high gear this year and be quite successful, according to a new report. eMarketer estimates the company will earn $150 million in 2011, up more than 333 percent from the $45 million it may have earned in 2010. Obviously, that would represent a huge increase. Then eMarketer thinks Twitter will achieve a repeat performance of sorts in 2012, upping its ad revenue by about $100 million again to $250 million.

Following the did-he-jump-or-was-he-pushed debates that surfaced last week, there's good news for Eric Schmidt: vacating the role of CEO of Google will be more lucrative than working a normal job for a lifetime. It turns out Google intends to give Schmidt an awards package worth $100 million. That doesn't quite mean exotic car dealers close to Mountain View should expect Schmidt to drop by and offer cash for one of every model. Amir Efrati wrote this weekend,

Facebook users' messages, likes, and photo uploads may at some point have )another( very tangible effect on Prineville, Oregon. It's starting to look like Facebook - which is already building one data center near the city - could also build a second facility. To be clear: nothing's been confirmed, and no timeframe's even been hinted at. But people have at least gone on the record. Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester told John Letzing ,

New numbers are out with respect to the U.S. online video landscape, and, to be perfectly honest, they're quite similar to the old numbers. But according to comScore, at least one noteworthy thing happened in December: Hulu made its way back onto a top ten list. Hulu's been on the edge as of late. In October, it came in tenth among video sites in terms of total unique viewers. Then Hulu, despite all the backing it's received from ABC, Fox, and NBC,

It may be quite a while before it's possible say for sure whether Eric Schmidt chose a new position or was asked to step down, but in the meantime, no one needs to feel sorry for him. The soon-to-be ex-CEO of Google has submitted paperwork to clear the way for a stock sale worth about $334 million. A statement Google sent to the SEC indicated, "Eric intends to sell approximately 534,000 shares of Class A common stock." Multiply that number by $625.

For years to come, some of the world's top math whizzes may be indebted to Google. The search giant announced today that it's donating 1 million )or about $1.35 million( to the International Mathematical Olympiad, which should help fund global events through 2015. A little background information: the IMO is considered the world championship of mathematics for people under 20,