Google, Facebook Face Off Continues

Every week, Mountain View makes news with technology developments, discoveries and sometimes controversies.

Today, Mountain View Patch brings you “Bits and Bytes,” where we’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our backyard giants, start-ups and small businesses alike.

With over 425 million mobile users, Facebook is getting ready to challenge Google, the leading seller of ad space on mobile devices, at its own game. The company that filed for an initial public offering last month is counting on mobile ads to bring in a new stream of revenue. According to EMarketer, the total mobile-ad industry may bring in almost $11 billion in revenue by 2016 in the United States alone.

Google won the bidding war with Facebook, as they picked up the incredibly talented team of Milk, including Kevin Rose. The first app from startup lab, Milk – Oink – has officially shut down claiming that it was a “test.”

Check out what top officials at Google, and other industry leaders’ rate as the top advice they ever got.

Provider of cloud-based corporate performance management solutions, Adaptive Planning secured $22 million in venture financing led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Cardinal Venture Capital, Clairmont Capital, Monitor Ventures, and ONSET Ventures.

This came soon after their neighbor on Mountain View’s Landing Drive, Jumio picked up $25.5 million in Series B, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Jumio’s patent-pending Netswipe solution turns any webcam into a secure credit card reader, allowing merchants to easily and efficiently accept payments online.

CNN report indicates that LinkedIn may be proving to be a hacker’s gold mine. “6000 real LinkedIn connections for only $10!” read a recent post on one of the hackers’forums. Incidents of “spear phishing” are on the rise but the question is – Is the professional networking site inadvertently aiding it?