VENTURE CAPITAL POST

For the first time, tech companies like Google Inc and Apple Inc will be allowed to give information about government requests for customer data, Bloomberg data.

A Marshall, Texas federal jury awarded $1 to Google for winning a case against patent-licensing company Beneficial Innovations Inc for suing its customers, Bloomberg reported.

Cambridge, England-based company Kensho closed a $10-million seed funding round for a cloud-based intelligent market research assistant called Warren that can answer complex financial queries in natural language.

Google, Apple and other tech firms in Silicon Valley will be charged $1 each time their commuter shuttles will utilize the city's bus stops, Reuters reported.

Compared to the spending of its five biggest US rivals combined, Google Inc has spent more money in the past two years in its effort to reach out to new markets, Bloomberg reported.

Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd. has hired Ron Louks as head of its loss-making devices business. Louks had served as chief executive officer at OpenNMS Group and as head of technology at Sony Ericsson.

Google Inc., which acquired startup Bump Technologies last year for $30 million to $60 million, will end the operations of smartphone file-sharing app Bump and photo-aggregating software Flock on January 31.

Retrofit, a fitness company whose clients include Google, Salesforce.com and American Medical Association, has raised $5 million in a Series B funding round lead by Cambia Health Solutions.

Troubled smartphone maker BlackBerry on Tuesday announced that John Sims will join the company as head ofmits gloabl enterprise services business. Sims is a former executive at German software firm SAP.

Google Inc. is looking to develop an $82 million corporate aviation facility in San Jose to service its private jets. Google is partnering with private aviation firm Signature Flight Support and private jet company Blue City Holdings for the project.

Google Ventures released its year-end data and, and TechCrunch noted that it has done tremendously, quieting critics who had said that the investment arm of Google Inc had not secured any major deals like with Twitter and Pinterest.

Google Inc. on Friday announced that it had completed the purchase of engineering and robotics company Boston Dynamics. Boston Dynamics is the eight robotics firm that the Internet giant has acquired in the last half-year.

The news about Google Inc's plan to use the technology of British chip designer ARM Holdings Plc for the former's server chips had seen the latter's shares rising to as much as 5.7%.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission said it will be looking into whether Google Inc had the complied with the necessary paperwork to build its barge project on Treasure Island.

According to Speedtest.net, 30 countries including Moldova and Uruguay have faster Internet than the United States. Google Inc. has began building its fiber network in Kansas. A nationwide Google Fiber rollout, however, may cost USD1 billion.