Week in review: A first look at Google’s Music Beta

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Google’s Music Beta first look: it’s miserable — Google’s Music Beta is supposed to provide users with a way to access the music anywhere, anytime as easily as physically possible. But it’s just not that easy.

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Bad information spreading on PlayStation Network’s return date: nothing new, folks — There was some unfortunate wording in a Bloomberg news report on Sunday about Sony’s PlayStation Network, leading many publications to report that the network will be down until May 31. But that’s incorrect, according to Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold.

Angry Birds flutters over to Chrome — Google is bringing Rovio’s Angry Birds, a popular game on mobile devices where players fling birds at structures to try to destroy pigs, to its Chrome web browser to showcase how fast the browser has grown over time.

Why I (and probably 600,000 others) stopped playing World of Warcraft — Blizzard’s flagship online game, World of Warcraft, shed around 600,000 players in the last quarter even though it released one of its most successful expansion packs yet. VentureBeat’s Matthew Lynley offers a possible explanation.

Instant video game lets you kill bin Laden yourself — What the game lacks in quality it certainly makes up for in controversy.

And here are five more posts that we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Google lobbies Nevada to be first state for self-driving cars — Google hasn’t given up on its sci-fi ambitions to make self-driving cars a reality.

At last, Sid Meier readies Civilization World social game for Facebook — Sid Meier’s Civilization World is finally close to coming out of an insane development cycle.

Why it’s hard to care about Facebook’s privacy slap fight with Google — In all the discussion this week about Facebook’s secret attempt to plant negative news stories about Google, most of the comments have (deservedly) focused on Facebook’s underhanded tactics. But here’s the other thing that struck me about Facebook’s criticisms: They’re pretty lame.

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San Francisco will juice your electric car for free — The city of San Francisco, Calif., will install electric vehicle charging stations in publicly-owned garages and at San Francisco International Airport by the end of the year that drivers can use for free until 2013.

Everybody’s hot for Samsung’s Galaxy S II, hits 3 million pre-orders — It looks like Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S II may be the Android smartphone to beat this year.