Y Combinator's Demo Day; Google pays $500M in settlement

Every week, Mountain View makes news with technology developments, discoveries and sometimes controversies.

Today, Mountain View Patch brings you “Bits and Bytes,” where we’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our backyard giants, start-ups and small businesses alike.

Start up accelerator, Y Combinator, held its Demo Day on Tuesday, Aug. 23 where 63 venture companies, the highest number of ever, pitched their big ideas to Silicon Valley investors. While about half were "off the record," Tech Crunch compiled the pitches of those were open to press coverage. The most scene-stealing startups, according to Gigaom, were ZigFu, Vidyard, Codecademy, Debteye and Verbling. The five products that Mashable bets on are Kicksend, Codecademy, Snapjoy, Picplum and Debteye.

Teens in Tech launched a six-week incubator program for budding entrepreneurs at Mountain View start-up Appcelerator, which provided free office space to participants. Teens in Tech’s founder and chief executive officer is 18-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky who guides aspiring entrepreneurs. Teens in Tech, which now commands financial backing from companies such as Google, Microsoft and AT&T, was founded to help young people, in the 13-19 age brackets, launch companies.

Owner of the world’s most popular search engine, Google agrees to pay US $500 million in a drug advertising settlement–one of the largest financial forfeiture penalties in history, according to Deputy Attorney General, James Cole. Though the tech giant's advertising practices have been in question for preferential placement to its own products as of late, this time Canadian pharmacy ads on Google allowed for illegal imports of prescription drugs into the US. According to the Department of Justice, this is a strict "no-no" as the Food and Drug Administration can’t ensure the safety and efficacy of such drugs.

While Google continues to buys patents to protect itself from legal spats, Facebook plans to duck the Google+ challenge by buying companies. Facebook’s Director of Corporate Development Vaughan Smith, said in an interview that the social networking giant plans to make 20 acquisitions this year alone.

Mountain View-based broadband entertainment solutions provider, Verismo Networks, enters the consumer entertainment space with the launch of Mela, a South Asian entertainment platform. With plans to roll out its service on all major platforms including PCs, mobile devices, video gaming consoles, blue-ray players, Mela hopes to provide consumers with an “unparalleled television viewing experience over broadband.”

Dan Berkenstock, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Skybox Imaging, has been honored by MIT Technology Review as one of the 35 top innovators of 2011 from over 300 nominations. Berkenstock became the TR35 Honoree for 2011 for developing a low-cost approach to revolutionizing global access to near real-time satellite imagery and derived information products.