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.

Now that the confetti from the “Verizon’s getting the iPhone” hubbub has died down, it’s time to talk turkey.  It’s not going to be cheap to use Verizon’s iPhone to begin with — unlimited data packages, anyone? — but now, information about the additional charges potential users will face are surfacing, and, suffice to say, the results are typical.

That is, you’re going to have to pay for pretty much every little capability the iPhone has, including using your phone as an Internet hotspot.

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered an operator of an online “scareware” scheme to pay more than $8 million to settle charges he used deceptive ads to trick people into thinking their computers were infected with malicious software, and then sold them software to “fix” their non-existent problem.

The defendant whose settlement was announced today will be required to turn over $8 million so it can be used to reimburse victims of the scam.

Social media start-up, mediafeedia has introduced a social media management tool aimed at businesses on Facebook.

 Users can create a mediafeedia account without having to download software and import their Facebook business pages they manage.  The pages will be added to the user’s mediafeedia dashboard and synched with Facebook.

eBay said today it has hired Triad Retail Media to sell and manage all on-site display advertising on its network of websites.

Under the deal, Triad will provide display advertising management to offer more customized ads that will better highlight listings and improve the experience for buyers and sellers on the site.

Key features of the agreement include:

Netflix, which for better or worse possesses a rather unique ability to entertain solitary users for hours on end, is about to get both more social and more specific.  The company has informed shareholders that it will connect with Facebook in order to develop personal Netflix accounts.

A few months ago Facebook officially did away with the idea of adding “boxes” of custom content to Facebook pages and instead forced users into adding “applications” as the primary way to add custom layouts, tabs and content.

While this change is old news and has been covered widely, Facebook continues to tinker with the interface and so I’ve been getting lots of questions again about the steps involved in adding custom content and thought I would do a quick tutorial.

Early in December, Google vowed to distance itself from piracy. To do so, the company agreed that it would remove terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in their Autocomplete and Instant services.

Augmented reality app provider Layar made a very interesting announcement today – it’s making its AR technology available for all iPhone apps. In other words, expect to see a lot more innovative AR-related features in a lot of apps. 

This extension of AR tech comes in the form of Layar’s Layar Player (now out of beta). It’s available to all agencies, brands, and developers to use to include AR (for free, no less) in their iPhone apps. 

The Internal Revenue Service has introduced IRS2Go, its first smartphone app that allows people to check on the status of their tax refund and receive tax information.

"This new smart phone app reflects our commitment to modernizing the agency and engaging taxpayers where they want when they want it," said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.

"As technology evolves and younger taxpayers get their information in new ways, we will keep innovating to make it easy for all taxpayers to access helpful information."

Personally, I’ve never been overly concerned about receiving a perfect grade as long as I know I’ve done my best. I raised my kids to think the same way. I believe there may be a downside to every kid on the team getting trophies, or taking up an entire cub scout meeting to hand out enough awards, badges and patches to make an old general jealous.

But I understand that awards and recognition for great work can be both fulfilling and fun.

"Principal scientist" is an important-sounding title, and it’s hard to imagine any person holding it wouldn’t contribute a lot to his or her company.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, it looks like Bing’s principal scientist was lured away by Twitter.

Skype just released a new version of Skype for Mac, which no longer carries the beta label. It also introduces group video calling (as part of a premium package). 

That package also includes live chat customer support, a seven-day free trial, and the option to either purchase a day pass starting at $4.99 or a monthly subscription at $8.99 a month.

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.  UPDATE: Bedier’s LinkedIn profile now indicates he’s a VP at Google.

Every now and then, rumors will start about a mythical Facebook phone. Eventually, Facebook will shoot them down, as is the case this week. 

The rumor, this time, was that HTC was going to launch a Facebook branded phone at Mobile World Congress next month. Details of the phone were made available as well, and rumors began to spiral into "Facebook’s going to compete with Apple and Android" territory. 

Over the past month or so there’s been an escalating amount of hype and discussion about Q&A startup Quora in the tech world. As a quick background, Quora was founded last year by former Facebook executives/engineers Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. It raised a nice round of venture capital at a really high valuation for a company that had yet to launch.

For many Skype users the tool is simply a phone replacement or a way to make international calls without a charge.

While the direct communication uses are obvious, there are so many other ways to use this tool as well. In fact, I believe that one of the hottest trends of the back half of 2011 will be the ubiquitous use of video communication on the mobile device and this type of behavior change is going to make some of Skype’s features even more useful for business.

Google has uploaded its video of outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt speaking at the DLD conference in Muich this week. 

Google has uploaded its video of outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt speaking at the DLD conference in Muich this week. 

Google has uploaded its video of outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt speaking at the DLD conference in Muich this week. 

Millennial Media has released its latest monthly SMART report, looking at the mobile advertising landscape. The report looks at the top verticals (six of which had triple digit growth YoY).

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."

Could Google CEO Eric Schmidt be coming soon to your living room? Rumor has it that he’s interested in getting into television. 

A rather unexpected report from the New York Post today indicates that he is in fact interested in having some kind of talk show, and has even been involved in the filming of a past pilot show (which reportedly didn’t turn out too well). According to the report, he’s been consulting with Liza McGuirk, executive producer of CNN’s Parker Spitzer. 

Twitter has launched a new feature accessible at Twitter.com that shows connections you may have with other Twitter users. 

If you go to someone’s Twitter profile, it will display a section in the right-hand pane (of the new Twitter design), just under the account info (tweets, following, followers, listed) that says "Connections", and displays people that are following that person and people that both you and that person mutually follow.