Week in review: Why Google needs DRM

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

Why Google needs the video digital-rights technology behind Netflix — Google recently announced that it has purchased Widevine, a video digital rights management company mostly known as the technology behind Netflix’s video protection. Why does Google suddenly need a credible DRM solution? Webtrends’ Peter Yared explains.

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Why Facebook’s playing a dangerous game with the Winklevoss brothers — Usually, Facebook’s public-relations officials can be relied on for a good old-fashioned “no comment” on truly sensitive matters. That makes the company’s response to a recent wave of reporting about ongoing litigation with Harvard classmates of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg more than a bit surprising.

In another stunner, OnLive enables game spectating and Windows 7 apps on your iPad — OnLive is announced Tuesday that a limited version of its online game service is now available for the iPad and a beta version for Android devices will soon be available. You’ll even be able to use the OnLive app to run Windows 7 apps on your iPhone.

Viber gets 1M downloads in 3 days for dead simple iPhone VoIP calls — Just when you thought Voice over IP (VoIP) couldn’t be exciting again, along comes Viber with its free iPhone app.

Google finally spills the beans on Nexus S, coming Dec. 16 on T-Mobile — Get ready for the new Android king.

And here are five more posts we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:

Why your TV is the new app battleground — As our televisions are getting smarter, TVs are quickly beginning to parallel the development of smartphones.

Microsoft’s Hotmail, struggling to fight Gmail et al, looks to Reddit users for hope — The team behind Microsoft’s oft-maligned email service, Hotmail, is hoping to score back some of its users from the titans in the industry like Gmail by doing something Google hasn’t quite pulled off: showing they are human.

Three reasons you might actually buy a Chrome OS netbook — I’m finally starting to understand why someone would buy one of these devices.

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One expert’s take on fixing wind energy: Think smaller — Think smaller, says R.J. Lyman, a partner at law firm Goodwin Procter and former Massachusetts assistant environmental secretary. Nix the massive utility-scale projects.

Worried about your reputation? Intelius now lets you track it online — The new subscription service will help people track their online “footprint” and gain greater control over the information available about them through public records, social networking profiles, and other sources that could affect someone’s reputation.