At $1,500, it looks like Google Glass is set to become the most expensive personal music listening device in history. Yes, as The New York Times reports, Google this week is expected to unveil a set of features for Glass “to search for songs, scan through saved playlists and listen to music in high fidelity.” To actually hear the music, however, Glass owners will be encouraged to spend another $85 on special earbud headphones.

Did Facebook waste a billion dollars on Instragram? So suggests blogger (and freelance analyst and consultant) Ben Evans. “As it turns out, Facebook did not solve the unbundling problem by buying Instagram -- even in photos,” Evans writes, noting the photo-sharing service’s modest sharing figures. “It bought just one of many mobile social products, and not even the biggest.”

In a move that's sure to strengthen its monopoly on the ecommerce industry, Amazon has tapped the U.S. Postal Service to help it deliver packages on Sundays. “The marriage … underscores Chief Executive Jeff Bezos' ambitions to weave Amazon more deeply into consumers' lives,” The Wall Street Journal writes. “Sunday delivery is Amazon's latest effort to chip away at a key advantage for brick-and-mortar retailers: immediacy.”

During peak hours, Netflix and YouTube now account for more than half of U.S. consumers’  “downstream” traffic. That’s according to new data from broadband service company Sandvine, which measured “fixed networks" -- those that consumers use at home and at work. Meanwhile, “Hulu and Amazon, despite big efforts to catch up to Netflix in video delivery, are coming up short. At least if you’re counting bits,” AllThingsD notes.

Vox Media is laying out upwards of $30 million to buy Curbed.com L.L.C., and its digital media assets, including real estate blog Curbed.com, the foodie-focused Eater.com, and retail-related Racked.com. Jim Bankoff, Vox’s chief executive, tells The New York Times that it was time to expand his business. “We think this combined expanded platform will clearly attract premium advertisers,” he said.

If Stephen Elop gets the top job at Microsoft, the former Nokia CEO will likely disentangle the company’s Office products from its Windows operating system. As sources tell Bloomberg, software programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint would then become made available via most smartphones and tablets, including those made by Apple and Google. 

In another big original content coup, Netflix has tapped Marvel to develop four live-action superhero series, along with what The Verge calls, “an Avengers-style special event.” Slated to start rolling out by 2015, no less than 13 episodes of each series are expected to be produced. “It's Marvel's biggest venture yet into television series, and it's one of Netflix's biggest commitments as well -- one that's certain to draw quite a few eyes,” The Verge writes. 

Branching out beyond “likes,” Facebook is expanding its star ratings system from mobile to desktop. “Star ratings encourage more people to rate a business, making it eligible to appear in News Feed and help others discover a business they didn’t know about previously,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch, this week. “For businesses themselves, this also leads to greater brand awareness.” 

The bad news for Path is that the mobile social network is losing two executives -- business head Matt Van Horn and developer Nikhil Bhogal -- to other endeavors. The good news is that the startup is reportedly close to raising some much needed capital in the range of $7 million. Summing up the startup’s existence, TechCrunch writes: “It’s been a long, hard road for Dave Morin’s Path, as it has seen lagging growth in a tough … social market.” 

Google is finally dishing on the two barges that it’s building out off the coasts of Portland, Maine, and San Francisco. “The barges are ‘an interactive space’ to teach people about its technology,” Google tells TechCrunch. “The construction of the barges is said to be designed with portability in mind, allowing the components to be moved on land or sea … Having a physical demonstration location for products like Google’s head-mounted Glass computer would make sense.”