Week in review: Verizon finally has an iPhone

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

Live at Verizon’s iPhone event: iPhone 4 will be available early next month — At long last, Verizon has an iPhone.

Toyota Prius Plug-In: Can it measure up to Chevrolet, Ford and Nissan’s offerings? — Ford and GM have staged comebacks that hinged in part on the carmakers’ embrace of new electronics, launching greener cars with smartphone apps and wireless and voice-command capabilities. Toyota will soon be joining the crowd by offering all of the above.

Google already knows its search sucks (and is working to fix it) — Google’s core business (Web search) has come under fire recently for being the ultimate in failed tech products. Columnist Peter Yared asks: What took so long?

Green car makers uses social media to hawk new models — Is a Vimeo worth a thousand words for car manufacturers?

Would you take $1 to run the biggest tech company in the world? — For the third year in a row, the chief executive of Apple turned down any kind of significant salary or stock options.

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

The top trends of the Consumer Electronics Show (poll) — Returning from the enormous gadget conference in Las Vegas, we’ve sniffed out trends that could play out throughout 2011 as companies execute on their grand ambitions.

Will Facebook ever be rid of the Winklevoss twins? — Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who settled with Facebook two years ago in a dispute over the social network’s origins, were back in court this week trying to undo the settlement. What makes the case so interesting is the fact that Facebook hasn’t been able to make the Winklevosses go away.

Why Verizon’s iPhone spells the end of the golden age for carriers — At Tuesday’s launch event for the Verizon iPhone, Verizon Wireless displayed an inadvertently ironic slogan: “Rule the air.” What the actual news revealed was that Verizon (and other wireless carriers) can no longer make that claim.

Benchmark raises $425M fund, but top firm loses partner who made it famous — Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm that belongs to a handful of elite Silicon Valley venture firms, has raised a fresh $425 million fund to invest in new companies. But following the news came the revelation that one of its star investors, Bob Kagle, is apparently stepping down.

Cisco security exec cheers on Android’s security flaws — Cisco is rooting for Google’s Android mobile operating system — but probably not for the most genuine of reasons.