Google today updated its Inside Search site, its homepage for all things search, with a handful of educational and interactive features that explain in layman’s terms how Google’s Search works. Did you know the web had over 30 trillion pages, by the way? Or that Google supports over 100 billion searches every month? Or that Google’s index is over 100 million gigabytes? If you find factoids like that interesting, you’ll probably enjoying a scroll through the new “How Search Works” live infographic, which also contains a few clickable links to charts and graphs showing things like the rise of spam, and milestones in Google’s spam-fighting techniques, among other things.

The update is something of a follow-up to last year’s detailed look into how Gmail works called The Story of Send. For the most part, it’s really high-level stuff here, designed to make the details of technology approachable and understandable to a more mainstream audience looking to gain a better understanding of what happens after they type into the search box.

The new sections of the site include not only the graphical explanation of Google Search’s inner workings, but also details about Google’s major algorithms and features, a list of Google policies, plus a 43-page document that explains how Google evaluates its results. (OK, that part might be a little more in-depth, I’ll admit.)

Apple’s landmark $1 billion damages award over Samsung has been partially vacated by presiding judge Lucy Koh, FOSS Patents reports. The judge has orders just north of $450 million be struck from the $1 billion total, an amount which relates to 14 Samsung products involved in the case, pending a new trial to determine appropriate damages for those specific devices.

Koh said that a new trial has to be held to determine damages on those products, which include the AT&T Galaxy SII, the Galaxy Tab, Nexus 4G and others, based on the fact that the court isn’t able to make adjustments to the amounts owing based on infringement by those products for legal reasons. In the second trial, which will be decided by an entirely new jury, Apple could wind up being awarded more or less in damages based on their evaluation of the per-product cost of infringement for that group of Android smartphones and tablets.

Apple is still entitled to an award of $598,908,892 from the part of the damages decision that Koh has determined should stand, though FOSS Patents suggests that no actual money will change hands until the result of this new, second trial is decided. Apple will also be able to exercise its option to pursue additional damages based on post-judgement royalties, and pre-judgement interest, pending the new jury’s decision.

TechCrunch Disrupt NY is right around the corner! We have already announced many influential speakers, including Kevin Systrom of Instagram, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Ron Conway of SV Angel, Kevin Ryan of Gilt Groupe and will be announcing many more soon. You can view the whole list of speakers and special guests we have announced so far here.

Disrupt NY is going to be an amazing show. We are giving away one free ticket to the show that will get you into the full three days of the conference, plus all of the after parties where you can dance and drink the night away with us. We also are going to give away a Nest learning thermostat.

The Nest is better than your regular thermostat because it can actually learn your daily schedule, and program itself to change heating and cooling patterns accordingly. It knows when you’re away and when you’re at home, and using it can lower your home’s energy bill by around 20 percent. You can also connect to the Nest remotely via the Nest Mobile app for Android and iPhone and change the temperature even if you’re on a business trip on the other side of the world. This second-generation version is compatible with a lot more home heating and cooling systems, too, and smaller than the first-gen device.

The app stores are overrun, and there’s little way to get noticed until you break into the charts. So Google has just announced a new AdWords unit called “Click-To-Download” mobile ads that lead directly to iTunes and Google Play. With a similar design to Facebook’s app ads, Google is reaching out its hand for a cut of the paid discovery market emerging as every company in the world goes mobile.

How are the big ad platforms going to stay afloat as users shift from the full-sized web to the small screen? Less room to show ads and reluctance to tap in payment information to make purchases mean traditional advertising models fail on mobile.

But there’s one type of conversion that’s much easier on the go and that advertisers are willing to pay for: app installs.

Shasta Ventures is doubling down on enterprise software experience with the additions of Zenprise CEO Jayaram Bhat as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) and Issac Roth as Venture Advisor at the early-stage venture firm. As the company tells us, this is a move to grow Shasta’s enterprise software, cloud and SaaS practice.

New EIR Jayaram Bhat hails from enterprise mobile security company Zenprise, where he was CEO. Zenprise was recently acquired by Citrix. Prior to Zenprise, Bhat was a corporate consultant and was Vice President of Marketing at Mercury Interactive Corporation. He was also a member of the board of Electric Cloud and Tealeaf, which was acquired by IBM in 2012.

Roth, who was formerly at open source enterprise giant Red Hat, is joining Shasta as a venture advisor. At Red Hat, he helped create OpenShift, Red Hat’s Platform-as-a-Service. OpenShift was based on Makara, a Shasta-backed company which Roth co-founded (and Red Hat acquired). Roth was also instrumental in Red Hat’s investments in Appcelerator and 10gen. Prior to founding Makara, he spent five years at Wily Technology and CA Technologies.