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Google Inc tried to partner with Facebook but was rebuffed, denying the search giant to the social network's trove of personal information, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.

Facebook is poised to hit 700 million users, according to analysis from the Facebook statistics blog SocialBakers. If Facebook were its own country, it would be the third-largest in the world. Fast adoption rates in places such as Brazil, Indonesia, Egypt, the Philippines and Mexico have the site closing in on its next milestone.

The Facebook "Like" and Twitter "Tweet" buttons that appear on so many websites do a lot more than just help you share content with friends.

A hearing later this week will point the lens on Apple, Google, and Facebook's mobile privacy policies. This follows last week's hearing about the same topic.

Facebook users' personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years, according to Symantec Corp's official web blog.

Mark Zuckerberg is eyeing the takeover of the much popular Skype, in a deal that might cost Facebook close to $4 billion.

Facebook is so large that it now accounts for about one out of every three ad impressions in the U.S., according to the latest statistics from comScore Ad Metrix. In the first quarter of 2011, comScore estimates that 1.1 trillion ads were served to U.S. Internet users, and 346 billion of those (or 31 percent) were on Facebook.

What happens when you cross the world's largest social network with one of the hottest business models in e-commerce? Facebook wants to find out. Facebook is launching a deals program Tuesday in five U.S. cities, following on the popularity of Groupon and other services that offer deep discounts - for example: $50 worth of food at a local eatery for $25.

Whoops.Looks like The New York Times has a little embargo breaking situation on their hands. (Which we love -- chaos!) They've just put up a story with the URL: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/latest-rival-to-groupon-livingsocial-facebook-embargo-till-midnight/ (bolding mine). That page is obviously no longer found, but it was live for a bit. And it is a big one: Facebook's Groupon/LivingSocial "killer".

Advice for potential bank robbers: don't create a trail of posts bragging about your successful $62,000 robbery on Facebook. Unfortunately this tip would've actually been helpful for four suspected of robbing the International Bank of Commerce in Houston, Texas.