[Pictured left: Former Egypt President Hosni Mubarak, right: Wael Ghonim]
Wael Ghonim is a Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) marketing manager for the Middle East. Ghonim is also responsible for helping organize a protest against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. That protest was effective because Mubarak has just stepped down from the presidency of Egypt. While protesting in Egypt, Ghonim was temporarily arrested by the police. “We have passionate employees,” stated a Google manager in response to Ghonim’s actions. But Google also wants to make three points clear according to the Wall Street Journal:

Daily deals website Groupon announced that they are pulling their Super Bowl commercials from the air. These ads will be replaced with something that is less polarizing. “One thing is clear–our ads offended a lot of people,” stated Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. “We hate that we offended people, and we’re sorry that we did it.” Groupon also made the ads private on YouTube. [Fast Company]

Sony Corporation is hinting at withdrawing Sony Music artists from Apple iTunes. Sony is also considering withholding their games from the Apple App Store. Sony is planning to launch a music streaming service of their own soon. And they are launching an application store for their upcoming Sony PlayStation phone.

One Kings Lane is a website that was co-founded by Alison Pincus, the wife of Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. One Kings Lane raised a $23 million second round of funding led by Greylock Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner Perkins is a previous investors and so is Greylock partner Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman, TriplePoint Capital, and Marissa Mayer also participated in this round of funding. One Kings Lane sales were up 500% over 2009 and over 75% came from repeat customers. One Kings Lane is very similar to Groupon as it is a daily deals website. [TechCrunch]

Twitter wants advertisers to cough up more money for “Promoted Trends.” Promoted Trends are Twitter’s most consistent revenue source and they plan on increasing the prices in the next few months. The price of a promoted trend costs about $70,000-$80,000 per day. The future price of these ads in the next few months will be about $100,000-$120,000. [AllThingsD]

eBay subsidiary and payment company PayPal.com has announced a micropayment solution for “game developers, media publishers, or anyone interested in selling digital content on a global scale.” PayPal’s micropayment fee structure would be 5% plus 5 cents for purchases under $12. This fee is less than the typical payment providers for purchases under $12. The new service is called PayPal for digital goods. [ReadWriteWeb]

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs is actively working from home. He is involved in the strategic decisions and product development from home according to sources with The Wall Street Journal. He has also recently been publicly spotted at the Apple campus in Cupertino and restaurants around Palo Alto. Day-to-day operations at the company continue to be nearly unchanged under COO Tim Cook. “Steve is the CEO of Apple and during his medical leave he’ll continue to be involved in major strategic decisions,” stated an Apple spokeswoman.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is saying thank you to their iPhone users for not switching by giving them bonus 1,000 rollover minutes. To get the bonus, text “yes” to 11113020. [9to5Mac]