It’s good to be Google. Despite the embryonic state of mobile advertising, the search giant could take in up to $5 billion in revenue from selling ads on its search engine on tablet devices, this year. So reports The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog, citing a new report from the search ads specialists at Marin Software. The effectiveness of search ads on tablets climbed 31% during 2012, Marin found. 

President Obama on Tuesday signed an executive order intended to strengthen the defenses of the U.S.’s key cyber infrastructure. “The highly anticipated cyber order intends to improve information sharing about cyber threats between government and industry and establish a framework of cyber-security best practices that industry would elect to follow,” The Hill’s Hillicon Valley blog reports. 

Marissa Mayer isn’t happy with Yahoo’s search partnership with Microsoft. The problem? It simply isn’t delivering the expected market share gains or revenue, Yahoo’s CEO told attendees at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Tuesday. As Reuters reports, Mayer said: "One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other.” 

Foursquare this week begin offering non-members access to its shareable mobile venue pages. The move is part of a larger strategic shift for Foursquare, which, as CNet reports, is “becoming less of a social network and more of a recommendation search engine -- a la Yelp.” Shareable venue pages highlight user tips and photos, along with basic information like the address and hours of a business. 

Daily deal sites Half Off Depot has agreed to acquire CrowdSavings for $6.4 million in cash and stock. Remarkably, the two companies represent a total of 19 acquisitions combined in the deal space. Even more incredible, according to AllThingsD, is that the M&A market for deal sites remains active despite the fact that Groupon has clearly corned the space.  

Among other entertainment endeavors, Microsoft plans on producing premium interactive TV shows for the Xbox Live service. Nancy Tellem, entertainment and digital media president at Microsoft, said this week that the company is working on ways to make shows more interactive by tapping into technology like Kinect, GigaOm reports. 

With expansion on the brain, neighborhood-based social network Nextdoor is revamping its site. “Nextdoor needs to expand faster, before another startup moves in on its turf,” AllThingsD reports. Now, “Instead of restricting users to their previously cordoned off districts, they’re able to post information to nearby neighborhoods, those bordering the area a user resides in.” That startup has raised another $21 million to help with the effort. 

With the help of $3 million in seed funding, Nomi made its official debut on Monday. As PandoDaily report, “The company says it is the first tech startup to address ‘omni-channel’ marketing, which is a new buzzword that basically means ‘online plus offline.’” If you’re not familiar, “Omni-channel marketing seeks to tear down the silos between the two.” 

YouTube is coming to broadcast televisions everywhere… or at least in the UK. Soon, “customers of the BBC and ITV-backed satellite television operator will be able to flick to the YouTube online video site on the main programming guide, instead of having to link up their television sets to the internet or watch YouTube on a computer,” The Telegraph reports. 

Whipping gadget-crazed tech watchers into a frenzy, Apple is reportedly testing a smart watch. “Such a watch would operate on Apple’s iOS platform,” The New York Times’ Bits blog writes, citing sources. Still, any such product is far from a public debut, and, at this point, Bits has more questions than answers about the device. “What would it look like?” Bits asks. “Would it include Siri … How much will it cost?”