GigaOM Pro

After weeks of Facebook madness (and the ensuing letdown), GigaOM Pro readers have finally started shifting their focus elsewhere.

Well, not quite: Our most popular piece of research this week was David Card’s “Browser wars, part IV,” which looks into recent speculation that Facebook may be poised to enter the browser market by acquiring Opera. Following Yahoo’s oddly-timed released of Axis, its browser/search hybrid app for iOS, Card reflects on a research report he wrote 18 months ago, takes a look at the browser market and wonders if browsers are even relevant anymore.

Next, in “Future prospects for the set-top box” (part of our recently published “The living room reinvented” anthology), Mari Silbey takes a look at the often-maligned set-top device. Frequently disparaged as an unfortunate yet necessary consumer accessory, Sibley provides a nuanced historical overview of the device, a snapshot of the current market and what trends and companies to watch in the near-term future.

And last, in “Google moves AdWords off MySQL to F1,” Jo Maitland takes a quick look at the company’s recent decision to move AdWords onto its own newly created F1 database. Maitland provides a quick overview of the potential trade-offs and benefits of this switch — and what it might mean for NoSQL developers.

Also popular this week:

A near-term outlook for big data

One big red flag for Facebook investors: Zuckerberg’s iron grip

What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry