Google said today it has signed an agreement to acquire mobile display advertising firm AdMob for $750 million in stock.

Google says its acquisition will improve its existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in the growing new area.

Highlights of Google’s purchase of AdMob include:

According to Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere report, 70% of bloggers talk about products or brands on their blogs, eMarketer reports. And obviously some of these mentions would be prompted by free sample products, etc.—a practice popular enough to draw the notice of the FTC, which now requires disclosure on such review products.

If you were the folks at Twitter and you are talking about offering commercial level services that are going to eventually generate the mythical revenue that everyone is yapping about wouldn’t hate to hear about enterprise unrest among the ranks? The issue of Twitter account squatting is nothing new. There has also been little mention of it in the news as of late.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Monday that his office has stopped social networking site Tagged.com from misappropriating the contacts lists and identities of its members and from sending out millions of deceptive and unsolicited emails.

Through an agreement with Cuomo’s office, Tagged will pay $500,000 in penalties to the state and take measures regarding the access and use of its members’ personal information.

Social network games – and by extension, social networks themselves – received a strong endorsement this morning as a major acquisition was announced.  Electronic Arts has bought Playfish, a maker of said games, for at least $300 million.

Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA Interactive, explained in a statement, "Social gaming, with its emphasis on friends and community, is seeing tremendous growth and this is the right time to invest to strengthen our participation in this space."

Microsoft has plans to announce an advertising campaign with JiWire that will focus on enticing users to try out its search engine Bing in exchange for free WiFi where available.

The campaign is being supported by JiWire’s mobile advertising network, which reaches about 20 million unique users monthly. The Bing campaign will run across WiFi hotpsots in airports and hotels nationwide.

Citibank has released the results of a survey about small business social media use. According to Citibank, few small business owners and managers are increasingly using social networking sites.

Over 500 small business executives across the United States were surveyed, and 76% of them haven’t found sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or expanding their business during the last year. 86% said they hadn’t used social networks to get business advice or information either.

A recent study found that 54% of businesses prohibit employee social media use completely. There are valid arguments supporting both sides of this debate. We’ve seen quite a few news stories in recent months about social media policies coming to light.

Update: Google has now announced that you can buy Promoted Videos directly in AdWords.

With Thanksgiving just a few weeks’ away consumers are already starting to search for deals online.

Over the last seven days fifty percent of the top "Black Friday" related search terms include ads, sales and deals, according to Google Insights for Search.

On September 15th, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook "now serves 300 million people across the world."  It seems the site’s growth hadn’t exactly come to a stop, either, as about a month and a half later, stats indicate the number of users has risen to at least 325 million.

Consumers are more willing to engage with and buy from brands on social networking sites, according to a new study by Performics and ROI Research.

The study found thirty-four percent of respondents who have used a search engine to find information on a product/brand after seeing an advertisement on a social networking site. In addition, thirty percent have learned about a new product, service or brand from a social networking site.

eBay said Friday that the investor group led by Silver Lake has reached a settlement agreement with Joltid Limited and Joost N.V. that gives Skype ownership over all software licensed from Joltid and ends all litigation against the investor group and eBay at the closing of the acquisition.

Twellow has launched a new "Suggested Users" feature aimed at connecting Twitterers with similar interests. It should be much more useful to the common Twitter user than Twitter’s own suggested list, which is one static list for everybody, and includes mostly celebrities and other well-known people. In fact, Twitter may be getting rid of that list soon anyway.

Causes is a social networking donation platform that uses MySpace so that people can raise money for causes or issues that they believe in. Generally these kinds of activities help provide a community around issues like Breast Cancer, or stop smoking, or other issues that are part of our daily life.

Back in July Facebook updated policies for third-party ads on Facebook Platform. The company disabled two entire ad networks and over 100 more apps were suspended or brought into compliance over ad-related violations. Half of those had over a million monthly active users.

Google’s music service in China hasn’t achieved much so far; no one should look for Google’s next quarterly financial report to say it’s brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue or toppled Baidu.  But neither has it failed, and one person who’s close to the service recently indicated that it’s picking up steam.

Remember Twitter’s plans to make “retweeting” an official function?

Sure you do, the mock-ups looked like this:

Well, Twitter just announced the following:

Initial sales of Microsoft’s Windows 7 software outperformed those of Vista’s first few days on the U.S. market, according to the latest analysis from The NPD Group.

Windows 7 software unit sales in the U.S. were 234 percent higher than Vista’s first few days of sales. A combination of early discounts on pre-sales and a lack of promotional activity for the Ultimate version resulted in dollar sales that were 82 percent higher than Vista.

It looks like some lawyers representing cosmetics giant Mary Kay have removed their figurative war paint.  In early July, Mary Kay sued Yahoo, alleging trademark infringement, but not long ago, Yahoo was able to settle the case.

Update: Cookie Monster himself is appearing in today’s doodle at Google.com.

Do you know who Matt Goss is? If you’re an American, there’s a good chance that you don’t. Still, in some places, like his British homeland, he is a star. He’s sold 16 million records with his group Bros, which also featured his twin brother Luke. He’s been making records for about 20 years.

We knew Twitter lists were going to be big for Twitter. We knew they were going to greatly increase the usefulness of the service, and for many, even the enjoyment. What we didn’t know, however, was that right out of the box, we would see so many different uses for them, providing a window to the potential that they really do hold not only for Twitter itself, but for any business or individual who uses it. Let’s look at a few of those ways that Twitter lists are being used.

To be clear, I don’t consider myself an expert on Google Wave by any stretch of the imagination, but based on what I have learned about it, these are my responses to frequently asked Google Wave questions. These are just my opinions.

We’d love to hear your opinions about Google Wave. Share them here.

Will Google Wave replace email?