As news stories go, there have been more interesting ones than an employee not switching companies. However, rumors indicated that Twitter was courting Google's Sundar Pichai, and in order to keep him - which Google has - Google likely had to lay out a significant sum of money. To set the scene: Sundar Pichai has been with Google for almost seven years. Currently, he serves as a vice president of product management, and he's also in charge of Chrome and Chrome OS.

Between them, overhead satellite images and Street View photos tend to provide Google Maps users with a pretty complete picture of an area. But - following in Bing's footsteps - Google began to offer 45° imagery last year, and today, Google introduced images of ten new areas. Miss the initial announcement ? 45° imagery is about the same as what Bing Maps labeled a "Bird's Eye" view: just a diagonal, rather than straight-down, look at buildings and landscapes.

There are six days to go until Google announces its first quarter financial results, and as people begin to weigh in with predictions, the analysts at investment banking firm Evercore are optimistic that things will go well. Indeed, Evercore upgraded Google and raised its price target today. With respect to the first half of that development, Swetha Gopinath reported,

New stats from comScore are out, and as seen by the research firm, it seems the December search market was an eventful place. Google and Bing both managed to increase their market shares, while Yahoo saw a somewhat substantial drop occur. Let's start at the top. According to comScore, Google's market share rose to 66.6 percent,

Don't call your stockbroker or even place an informal bet just yet. The latest info on the proposed Google-Fairsearch deal represents a rumor twice over. Still, a report's indicated that the Department of Justice might decide to step in and stop the acquisition. Sara Forden and Jeff Bliss wrote this afternoon, "The U.S. Justice Department is preparing for a possible antitrust lawsuit to stop Google Inc.'s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software Inc.,

Australia, Brazil, and Mexico have populations of 22.5 million, 190.7 million, and 112.3 million people, respectively. Which adds up to 325.5 million potential users, all in all. It's a big deal, then, that the Bing-Yahoo search transition progressed in these three countries today. Kartik Ramakrishnan, who holds the very relevant title "Vice President, Yahoo Search Transition," wrote on the Yahoo Search Blog , "As planned,

Last month, Bing employees got a present of sorts, only this wasn't the type of thing a person can stuff under a tree or into an envelope. New data from Experian Hitwise instead indicates that Bing's share of the search market rose by five percent between November and December. That's significant on its own, considering how well and how long Google's dominated the field. As an added bonus: Yahoo's share of the search market stayed rock-steady,

Less than two months ago, something called "CityVille" launched on Facebook. Now, statistics indicate it's hit a tremendous milestone - the 100 million user mark - making the game a huge success and its creator, Zynga, a good deal richer. You can have a look at stats from AppData that put CityVille right on the verge below. Meanwhile, the game's official Facebook Page says it has a little over 100 million users. Either way, CityVille's advance might be slowing a little,

In an attempt to increase its appeal, homeowners often clean, repaint, and recarpet a house before trying to sell it. And similarly, following a talk by CEO Mike Jones, it's starting to look more and more like a significant overhaul and major layoffs at MySpace are geared towards helping News Corp. get rid of the property. This doesn't quite count as breaking news; in early November, Chase Carey, the COO of News Corp.,

Language barriers can be incredibly frustrating. There's nothing quite like facing another intelligent human being and realizing you'll both have to mime things for the next five minutes in order to have any chance of understanding each other. But Google's attempting to fix that with a new "Conversation Mode" in Google Translate for Android. A word of caution: don't first try out Conversation Mode when money, a legal matter, or food is at stake.

The term "austerity" was almost omnipresent in British culture last year, with budget cutbacks being discussed on a regular basis by just about everyone. Only it seems the search industry came out more than okay, as a new report from Econsultancy indicates the UK marketplace for SEO came to be worth roughly $680 million. Indeed, Econsultancy's 2011 SEO Agencies Buyer's Guide in part stated,

People who are interested in the Cr-48 Chrome Notebook - but who were apparently passed over when Google began shipping the machines - shouldn't give up hope quite yet. An exec at the company indicated that more Cr-48s are on the way. Sundar Pichai, a vice president of product management who's in charge of Chrome and Chrome OS, tweeted this week in response to a question on the subject, "Yes we will have another batch that will ship out this month.

There's lots left to do, and nothing's guaranteed, but it seems Firefox 4 will arrive in less than 50 days if all goes according to plan. Word's come straight from Damon Sicore, Senior Director of Platform Engineering at Mozilla. In a post directed at Mozilla developers, Sicore indicated yesterday that Firefox 4 should launch before the end of February. He wrote, "We've worked tremendously hard on Firefox 4, and it's time to ship it.

Yesterday, Google announced that it would stop supporting the H.264 video codec in Chrome, and in the process, praised the concept of openness. That approach isn't always popular, however, and a Trend Micro exec cited it when stating that Android devices are less secure than the iPhone. Trend Micro founder and chairman Steve Chang explained to Tim Culpan , "Android is open-source, which means the hacker can also understand the underlying architecture and source code.

Farmers and ranchers with ties to the American Farm Bureau Federation may want to call the nonprofit and see if it happens to be doing anything special. Farm Bureau should have more than a few dollars to spare, since it turns out the sale of FB.com to Facebook probably netted it around $8.5 million. As you might remember, the transaction was announced in November, and Mark Zuckerberg made it sound rather insignificant )and funny( by stating,

If you happen to know anyone who's employed by MySpace, today's a good day to keep them in your thoughts. MySpace CEO Mike Jones confirmed that heavy layoffs will occur, with 47 percent of the company's employees )or roughly 500 people( due to be affected. While it's hard to imagine that half of MySpace's workforce contributed absolutely nothing, and it's extra suspicious that Jones made his announcement at a time when the Verizon/iPhone hoopla was distracting everyone,

Android phones got off to a late start compared to the iPhone, but now, most research firms agree Android phones are winning in terms of sales. And Android tablets might soon pull off a similar coup, as the experts at BMO Capital Markets have predicted shipments of Android tablets and iPhones will draw even in the second half of this year. Elizabeth Woyke reported, "During BMO's Jan. 10 conference call, analyst Keith Bachman, who covers enterprise hardware and imaging, said,

The version of Android that'll come after the one codenamed "Honeycomb" is on the way, according to a new report, and should land this summer. The seasonally appropriate designation: Ice Cream. Don't try to plan a phone purchase just yet. Not much else is known at this point, and even those details aren't certain. Stuart Miles only wrote late yesterday, "According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, Android 2.4, otherwise known as Ice Cream,

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, along with Divya Narendra, are at it again. The three men, who claim Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them, have decided to effectively turn down an agreed-upon $65 million settlement and seek a much larger payout from the company. We won't bother going over too much of the backstory at this point; books, movies, and media coverage have made the tale pretty well known.

Not much info is available at this point, but the parents and teachers of scientifically inclined 13-18 year olds )along with the 13-18 year olds themselves( might want to stay close to their computers tomorrow morning. At 9 AM EST, Google intends to announce the first-ever Google Science Fair. Google's described the event as "the world's first online global science competition," and some interesting partners are also involved: CERN, LEGO, National Geographic,