Developers were excited by no shortage of announcements made this week at Google I/O, not the least of which was the unveiling of the new Google Wallet Instant Buy Android API.

“Shopping for physical goods on mobile devices is a difficult experience for consumers,” Google says, “leading to 97% of mobile shoppers abandoning their shopping carts.”

As a result, Google is giving its U.S. developers the new Google Wallet Instant Buy Android API, which makes buying in native Android apps “fast and easy.”

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Facebook isn’t the only company that can pay upwards of $1 billion to acquire a hot digital property.

According to AllThingsD, Yahoo may be seriously considering the acquisition of social networking platform Tumblr.

Earlier this week, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo needed to be “cool again.”

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Google is sprucing up its market-leading mobile ad network, AdMob.

“We want AdMob to open up opportunities for many more app developers worldwide to help them build successful businesses,” Google announced.

The ad giant is promising to afford its thriving developer community with an assortment of new tools and resources, including:

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For weeks now we’ve heard rumblings about the mysterious new business venture undertaken by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Simply known as Jelly, no one really knows what Stone’s new venture is all about. There are guesses, but only that – guesses.

What isn’t a guess, however, is whether Stone will launch his new startup with serious cash in reserve.

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We’ve known for some time that it’s coming. But on Thursday, the app finally arrived.

Facebook has just rolled out a version of its app for Google Glass.

If you’re lucky enough to be among the early testers of Google Glass, the Facebook app is certainly poised to occupy some of your time this weekend.

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This week, Distimo – a prominent leader in app store market data and analytics – announced several key executive appointments.

The appointments are supposedly designed to scale business development efforts, drive global sales and strategic partnerships.

The company also announced the simultaneous opening of new offices in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Singapore.

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Android and iOS combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013. But the lopsided strength of Android can’t be ignored. Google’s little green robot represented a whopping 75% of this smartphone shipment duopoly, IDC finds.

iOS, on the other hand, was just 17%.

“Underpinning the worldwide smartphone market is the constantly shifting operating system landscape,” explains Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team.

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