Google launched the +1 feature of its social layer yesterday and if you’re like most tech journalists you probably likened the move to attaching a Facebook Like button to Google search results. Well now someone has gone and done exactly that, no joke. Meet +Like , a Firefox, Safari and Chrome extension that lets you see how many people have liked a specific Google search result on Facebook as well as which of your Facebook Friends have recommended a specific piece of content, whether or not that action took place on Google search.

( Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on TechCrunch Europe ) I’ve been more skeptical than most about Spotify’s promise to launch in the US, but it looks like Europe’s favourite music service is ready to make good on all of its hype. We’re hearing from multiple sources today that licensing deals are finally in place with major US record labels and the company’s Valley investors are ready to provide the additional cash needed to pay for costly music licenses. Absent any last minute hiccups, the company’s US service is ready to go live as early as next week.

Earlier this afternoon, Mike posted an exclusive story about an internal war raging within Google. In the post he mentioned that Google revenue chief Nikesh Arora had recently returned from a two week jaunt in the Caribbean with Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt aboard Rosenblatt’s yacht, ‘ The Adsense ‘. A few minutes after the post went live, Rosenblatt called the TechCrunch office and left a voicemail.

It must be an absolute nightmare being a Hollywood executive in 2011. Four big studios (20th Century Fox, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.) have announced plans to introduce a premium video-on-demand service , to debut on DirecTV next month as “Home Premiere,” that will screen movies a mere 60 days after their theatrical debut. Renting such a movie will set you back $30.

Just after passing 250 million monthly active mobile users, Facebook overhauled its mobile web presence today.

Power struggles within Google’s executive team, which have been brewing since the announcement of long time CEO Eric Schmidt’s departure , are apparently bubbling up to the surface. Case in point: In an extraordinary move to illustrate its independence, say sources, the Google webspam team actually classified Google Places as spam and a content farm, and temporarily removed it from search results

Video game and software retailer Gamestop has acquired TechCrunch50 company Spawn Labs , a startup that develops game streaming technology.

The Facebook app for freemium flirting and dating website Badoo has had a meteoric rise this month, going from 2.8 million to 4.8 million daily active users. To attain the growth, Badoo streamlined its interface to focus users on the most viral aspect of the app, released several new language localizations, and added a set of compelling new questions to its quiz

A day after Google unveiled its “+1″ product , someone has already taken a close enough look at the code to track down an embeddable +1 Button . Said button wasn’t supposed to be public yet – they essentially let people recommend any online content on Google search. Indeed, for now the button appears only next to search results once you’ve switched +1 on , but Yvo Schaap, after some sleuthing, “in a stray piece of JavaScript” found what appears to be buttons that can be embedded on any site just like a Facebook Like, Tweet This or, well, Add to Google Buzz button.

My love of Boxcar should be pretty clear at this point. Because I’m an information junkie, it’s probably the app I use the most on my iPhone/iPad besides Safari