Google+ New Business Pages; LinkedIn Launches Veterans Hackday, Statistics Dashboard

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.

Like Facebook, Google’s social network–now over 40 million strong–launched the much awaited Google+ Pages for brands and businesses this week. The Internet search giant added a search twist to its business pages with Direct Connect, which means Google+ Pages will also appear in Google search results. In addition, a user can also jump straight to the Google+ Page of a particular entity by simply typing in “+”followed by the entity name.

With more than 1 million groups, LinkedIn has unveiled a dashboard for group statistics. Group admins can now drill into demographics, growth and activity, to gain unique insights and a better understanding of their group. "Now every one of the million plus groups on LinkedIn has its own infographics," tweeted CEO Jeff Weiner.

In honor of Veterans Day, LinkedIn announced a new page on their site to help Veterans find jobs. The page encourages hackers to "put together projects that can improve any aspect of a veteran's life." For the company this is as another step in their commitment to get Americans working.

Job search engine, Simply Hired, announced Monday, Nov. 7 that it will support job search for veterans on the National Resource Directory (NRD.gov). By giving them access to more than 500,000 job listings from employers who have favorable human resources policies for former military personnel, the Mountain View-based company hopes to put veterans back to work.

Maker of robotics solutions, Hansen Medical will sell $10 million in stock to Oracle Partners LP and Jack W. Schuler. With 3.4 million shares, or a 1.1 percent stake in the company, Oracle is the largest owner of Hansen shares.

Under the Radar, the 18th annual tech innovation conference took place at Microsoft in Mountain View on Thursday, Nov. 10. The , entrepreneurs, innovators, industry experts and investors. Startups Tagtile, BlackLocus, Slice, Salespod, SteelHouse, TribeHR, BetterWorks, Expensify, myERP, ThinkNear and Yast walked away with accolades.

Digital coupon provider, Coupons.com Incorporated, seems to be in the fast lane ever since the $200 million injection in June this year. The company has leased an additional building in Mountain View to accommodate new hires. If you’re looking for a job in engineering, sales, or the marketing function, you might want to check out their website.