The Google Nexus One phone has some solid advertising real estate. Google is promoting the phone on their homepage, Google.com. This advertising space is unique because unlike their competitors, Google does not ever sell advertising space on their homepage.

Google has done this sort of marketing campaign before in the past when the Droid and the HTC G1 was released. And if you visit Google.com on Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer — they recommend you to download Google Chrome.

The specs of the Google Nexus One phone include:
- 3.7″ AMOLED display with trackball
- 5 megapixel camera
- 130g in weight, 11.5 mm width
- Light sensor, GPS, accelerometer
- Two microphones (one of them being noise cancellation)
- Voice-enable text boxes
- Available through T-Mobile for a price of $179

In late November MSNBC announced that they are syndicating content from the BreakingNews Twitter account. The BreakingNews account has about 1.4 million followers on Twitter and MSNBC has decided to buy the domain name BreakingNews.com to complement the real-time news source.

MSNBC bought the domain name from PV Media Group. “Hard and fast breaking news is currently an underserved market. With www.breakingnews.com we can now provide the optimal solution,” stated Charles Tillinghast, the President of the MSNBC Digital Network.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced a couple of months ago that they have acquired AdMob, one of the biggest mobile advertising companies. Later it was revealed that Apple was mulling an offer to buy out AdMob too. Fortunately Quattro Wireless was still available for purchase and rumor has it that Apple has decided to buy out Quattro at a price of $275 million. According to a source with TechCrunch, Microsoft was rumored to be involved in the bidding war for Quattro too.

Quantcast, a website that monitors stats for websites announced earlier this week that they have raised $27.5 million. Cisco Systems is the leader investor in Quantcast. Quantcast competes with Alexa and Compete.com. Quantcast plans to use the funding to expand their advertising platform.

“Quantcast’s approach and technology for delivering high-value, targeted advertising aligns with the needs of Cisco’s customers, from service providers to media companies and ultimately consumers,” stated Cisco SVP and general manager of Media Solutions Group Dan Scheinman. Other investors include Polaris Venture Partners, The Founders Fund, and Revolution Ventures.

Thomson Reuters Corporation (TSX:TRI) has acquired Discovery Logic, Inc. Discovery Logic Inc. is a company that mines data for major clients. Discovery Logic takes databases and connects them in order to put together trends and measures performance. Thomson did not announce the financial details of the acquisition. Discovery Logic designs a line of software products called ScienceWire. ScienceWire uses algorithms to search through information on databases. Below is the full press release of the acquisition:

Seesmic went from becoming a video commenting service to a TweetDeck competitor in 2009. Seesmic made their service available on the web, BlackBerry, Android, Windows, etc. Earlier this week Seesmic acquired Ping.fm. Ping.fm is a service that updates all of your social networks in one go.

Seesmic started to challenge TweetDeck after they decided to acquired Twhirl. Ping.fm will allow Seesmic to update 50 social networks at once. CEO Loic Le Meur said Seesmic “can now update 50 social networks using Seesmic+Ping.fm from email, chat, sms, Blackberry, Android, web, Windows, OSX and much more soon,”

Seesmic has been downloaded about 3.5 million times. Ping.fm has about 500,000 users. Ping.fm updates about 200,000 status updates per day. Seesmic has a goal to update about 1 million updates per day in 2010.

Graphic.ly is a CDN company that specializes in comics. The company has raised $1.2 million in their first round of funding. DFJ Mercury is the early-stage lead VC firm behind the funding. Other investors include Starz Media, GC&H Investments, Northstar Equity Partners, Dave McClure, Paige Craig, and Chris Sacca.

Graphic.ly plans to use the funding for technology development, marketing, and future partnerships. One of Graphic.ly’s first projects after the funding is to develop an iPhone application for Marvel Comics. Graphic.ly launched out of TechStars, a startup incubation firm. Graphic.ly was founded by Kevin Mann and Thanavanth Jaroenvanit and is run by CEO Micah Baldwin. Baldwin is the former VP of business development at Lijit Networks.

Social movie website Flixster.com encourages users to share movie ratings and write reviews. Earlier this week Flixster acquired another movie reviews website RottenTomatoes.com. RottenTomatoes.com was owned by IGN Entertainment which is a subsidiary of News Corporation. Last month it was rumored that MySpace may buy out Flixster, but that did not come into fruition.

News Corporation will maintain a stake in the combined Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster company. Flixster has mobile applications on the iPhone, Palm Pre, BlackBerry, and Android. Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster will operate as separate entities.