Silicon Valley

5 ways Google's Motorola deal could spoil

The search giant's $12.5 billion acquisition bid is a bold move that could reshape the mobile business. It's also fraught with potential pitfalls.

By Alex Konrad, contributor

FORTUNE -- Sometimes, plan B is pretty good. When Google missed out on buying Nortel Networks' patent hoard earlier this summer, few could have predicted it would make a stunning $12.5 billion cash bid for Motorola Mobility.

The move is sure to change Google's (GOOG) business, MORE

A typical day on the Apple beat

50 stories about a rumor, followed by 20 stories about a report that the rumor is untrue

Late Thursday night, the Apple (AAPL) rumor site called, appropriately enough, MacRumors, picked up a Japanese report that the company had scheduled a special event on Wednesday Sept. 7. Could this be the launch of the long-awaited iPhone 5?

By Friday morning, MacRumors' report was the lead item on Techmeme, the online news aggregator that MORE

Today in Tech: Facebook's new 1-million square-foot campus

Fortune's curated selection of the weekend's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day. 

* Facebook started moving the first bunch of lucky staffers into its new 1-million square-foot Menlo Park campus. Company product architect Aaron Sittig documented the move with some choice snapshots.

* Apartment-swapping startup Airbnb is on a roll: it just raised $112 million at a $1 billion valuation, led MORE

Don't call it the next tech bubble - yet

Signs of exuberance are everywhere: Tesla roadsters, soaring real estate, overpriced vinegar - and eye-popping valuations for pre-IPO companies like Facebook and Zynga. So why are so many Silicon Valley denizens reluctant to use the B-word?

By David A. Kaplan, contributor

FORTUNE -- Michael Dreyfus, 49, is a leading real estate broker in the heart of Silicon Valley. During the winter he sensed the housing market was coming back, though he hadn't MORE

Wall Street is back in Silicon Valley, but its welcome may be worn out

By Peter Lauria, contributor

The big banks are back to help the Valley's tech pirates turn into titans, but this time there's a chill in the air.

FORTUNE -- They're back.

After all but abandoning Silicon Valley in the wake of the first dotcom implosion, Wall Street bankers have returned to the tech Mecca en masse, in search of -- what else? -- riches to be made taking startups public.

But the moneymen of MORE

What price for Square's cool features?

Jack Dorsey is trying to make it hip to use Square's new Register and Tabs features, and he's taking a page from Apple on premium pricing.

FORTUNE -- Jack Dorsey's startup, Square, gets a lot of attention from the media. After all, Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, which means plenty of people in Silicon Valley want to know about his every move. But Square's high-profile status doesn't mean its MORE

Silicon Valley's impatience: reckless or prudent?

Venture capitalists are hungrier than ever for next big startup, leading them to make some eye-popping investments -- which, for once, may be entirely justifiable.

By Aaron Levie, contributor

FORTUNE -- Having just closed a fourth round of funding, raising $48M from Andreessen Horowitz and other notable investors, I have the dubious distinction of having pitched Box more than a few dozen times on Sand Hill Road over the past five years. MORE

Bill Joy: Better batteries key to Green power adoption

Kleiner Perkins' Green guru believes on a household level, green power needs to recharge advanced batteries rather than plug right into the fuse-box.

FORTUNE -- Having helped both create the Java programming language and co-found Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy is best known as a technologist and entrepreneur. He hopes to add environmentalist to that list.

As a partner at leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Joy is devoting much of his time to MORE

Jack's back: Dorsey speaks on his plans for Twitter

Despite getting pushed out of the company he founded, Dorsey says he doesn't regret a thing and paints the broad strokes of Twitter's path forward.

FORTUNE -- The news buzzing all around Silicon Valley is probably one and the same: "@jack is back."

@jack is, of course, Twitter creator and co-founder Jack Dorsey, who confirmed, via Twitter, naturally, that he's returning to MORE

Today in Tech: Silicon Valley hiring perks, are we in a tech bubble?

A curated selection of the weekend's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you everyday.

"50% of Tweets consumed are generated by just 20K elite users" - Yahoo research

California added 100,000 new jobs in February, thanks in large part to Silicon Valley. In fact, no time may be better than now to work in Bay Area tech thanks to escalating salaries, bonuses, MORE