Leo Dirac / Gmail Blog:
Really new in Labs this time: SMS Text Messaging for chat  —  How often do you try to chat with somebody and they don’t respond because they just walked away from their computer?  Or maybe you’re in the middle of chatting with them just as they need to leave.

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
TV has license to kill movies at iTunes, Netflix  —  Apple is an Internet retailer and Neflix is a Web video rental service, but Hollywood treats them as if they were potential competitors to TV broadcasters.  —  In the past two weeks, customers of iTunes and Netflix’s streaming digital-movie service […]

Miguel Helft / Bits:
Yahoo Layoffs Today May Not Be the Last  —  Yahoo began laying off 1,500 workers on Wednesday as part of a plan, announced in October, to slash expenses by $400 million a year.  The cost cutting, however, may have to go deeper in the coming year.  —  “There could be additional […]

Miguel Helft / Bits:
Yahoo Layoffs Today May Not Be Last  —  Yahoo began laying off 1,500 workers on Wednesday as part of a plan, announced in October, to slash expenses by $400 million a year.  The cost cutting, however, may have to go deeper in the coming year.  —  “There could be additional staff […]

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
Latest twist in Apple vs. Psystar  —  Mac clone maker Psystar has modified its counterclaim against Apple.  Gone are the Clayton Act and Sherman Act antitrust claims, and in are sections that refute claims of violating the DMCA.  —  Psystar’s latest counterclaim rests on two pillars:

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Google Executive Departs for LinkedIn  —  Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, a longtime Google Inc. executive who helped start its mobile business and other key products, is leaving the company to become a senior executive at LinkedIn Corp.  —  Mr. Nishar, 40, in January will become vice president …

Flavio Lerda / Google Mobile Blog:
Street View on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile?  Check.  —  (cross posted with the Google LatLong Blog)  —  In case you hadn’t noticed, the Google Street View team has been busy photographing France, Italy, Spain, and Australia.  Given the international focus of recent Street View launches …

Jerry Yang / Yodel Anecdotal:
Tough times  —  As we announced in October, we’ve been aggressively managing our costs to bring them in line with the challenging economic conditions.  Unfortunately, that means laying off employees — by far the toughest part of being a manager.  Here’s the email I sent to Yahoos today:

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Another Sad Day for Yahoo: Layoffs Begin, While Employees Vent  —  While layoffs have become all too common across tech and this country, today’s at Yahoo feel a little worse, coming after 18 unceasing months of painful changes and stumbles at the troubled Internet icon.

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Amazon EC2 Now Available In Europe  —  We learned something today: Amazon EC2 wasn’t available in Europe up until today.  That’s news to us, because we thought it already was.  Amazon Web Services just released a statement announcing that European developers and businesses can now run their Amazon EC2 instances locally.