Consumer Watchdog issued a press release saying that Google spent $1.34 million trying to influence federal lawmakers and regulators in the second quarter of 2010, a 41% increase over $950,000 in the same period a year ago.

The group says Google has spent a total of $2.72 million lobbying during the first half of the year. This is based on reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.

Ars Technica points to a new report from the FCC about broadband access claiming that between 14 million and 24 million Americans still lack access to high speed Internet and that "the immediate prospects for deployment to them are bleak."

Robin Wauters of TechCrunch reports that a California court has ruled that Facebook doesn’t violate competition laws. This is in regards to an ongoing legal dispute between the company and Power.com.

"We are pleased the court rejected Power’s fundamental claim—antitrust violation—and upheld our right to protect our users’ data and enforce the privacy decisions they make on Facebook," a Facebook spokesperson told the publication.

As expected, Facebook announced that it has surpassed 500 million users. Half a billion and no signs of slowing down. The company also says it gets 100 billion hits per day and has 50 billion photos. Meanwhile Facebook Open Graph partner Pandora announced today that it has surpassed 60 million users.

A new social news iPad app called Flipboard has captured the interest of the tech industry today. Robert Scoble calls it "revolutionary." He provides an in-depth look at it and interview with its CEO here:

Skype has upgraded its iPhone app to allow users to make calls over 3G data connections for no additional charges. In addition, it supports multitasking.

Mashable looks at the recently updated Android distribution chart indicating that over 55% of all Android devices are running version 2.1. Just 22.1% are running version 1.6.