Could Barry Diller's Fi Life, a misconceived financial portal for young investors, already be in trouble? Several journalists who joined the outfit, a joint venture between Diller's IAC and Dow Jones, are said to be scrambling for new jobs. (Email if you have details.) The project involved Dave Kansas, a veteran of online financial news with a jinx; partnerships between big media conglomerates usually work better as cocktail party fantasy than they do as actual businesses; and Rupert Murdoch, who acquired Dow Jones last year, prefers full control. So Fi Life was obviously doomed. But one would have thought Diller, who's in a Delaware court fighting for control of his internet conglomerate, would want to arrange a more elegant unwinding.

The scene: two billionaires, former friends, are feuding over an internet conglomerate, IAC. John Malone's initial salvo comes in quotes given by the corporate assassin to the Wall Street Journal. Barry Diller, IAC's chairman, described his reaction in this week's court struggle for control of the sprawling internet company.
Malone: "The hook is set. It is our company... Barry ain't going to be able to spit the hook."
Diller: "I sail. I don't fish. I got the point."

Barry Diller is still pissed at Greg Maffei, the Liberty Media executive who broke up his close relationship with Liberty Chairman John Malone. Here is how Diller began testimony in his court battle to retain control of IAC: "Mr. Maffei, 47 years old, was an 'irresponsible executive,' Mr. Diller testified in Delaware Chancery Court. 'For over a year and a half, he has spoken badly about our businesses and our managers,' said Mr. Diller, who is scheduled to continue his testimony today." [WSJ]

For IAC's Barry Diller and his backer John Malone, the two billionaires wrestling for control of the internet conglomerate this week, a lawsuit is merely the continuation of negotiation by other means. A witness notes that the moguls are continuing settlement talks even as they trash each other in a Delaware court.

Evil queen and IAC CEO Barry Diller used to get along great with his gruff sugar daddy John Malone of Liberty Media, making business dates and talking about deals together. Then Greg Maffei came along, from the kill-or-be-killed culture of software maker Oracle, and became Malone's new "point man." All of a sudden, "everything got much more contentious" between Malone and Diller, an IAC board member testified yesterday, in a trail where Diller and Malone are struggling for control of the company. Now Diller is just a spurned partner "looking for a divorce," Maffei said. [NYT, WSJ]

One expects flouncy Barry Diller, when he testifies in this week's court battle for control of IAC, will provide the colorful language which has kept journalists sweet for him for so many decades. But John Malone, the soulless corporate raider who is trying to seize the internet conglomerate from Diller, didn't do so badly himself today. The Coloradan billionaire told the Delaware court that the extravagant Diller, who decked out his office in IAC's Gehry-designed headquarters with fabulously expensive rugs, had made "a fine art" of his exploitation of the company jet.

Internet mogul Barry Diller is locked in a battle with former cable baron John Malone for control over IAC, and he told his staff last night to expect the case to go to court this week. Writes a tipster:

Barry Diller's battle with Liberty Media head John Malone for control over IAC could be over in a week, Diller told a crowd at a Variety event yesterday. "It's very odd that two people who don't want to give up control of anything are giving control to a judge in Delaware," he said. "The wonderful thing about Delaware is they do it quickly. They make a decision quickly." Some shareholders might wish for the same alacrity from Diller.

As Barry Diller curtails both Ask.com's ambitions and its workforce, his hired hand is turning it into the Home Shopping Network of search engines. CEO Jim Safka says 65 percent of its users are female with a high concentration in their late 30s in the Midwest and Southeast. In an attempt to try to get also-ran search site back on track, Safka is laying off eight percent of Ask's employees and "reevaluating" its strategy. "Everything we do will be put through this strategic filter," he says. At last, a search engine that plays in Peoria. The only problem is that even Midwestern housewives know how to Google.

As his search engine Ask.com inches toward irrelevance, besieged IAC CEO Barry Diller has found another crowded market to pour cash into: videogames. According to Variety, Diller plans to invest $50 million to $100 million of IAC's money on InstantAction, a new site from recently acquired IAC subsidiary GarageGames. GarageGames doesn't develop games quite so "casual" as the type Mark Pincus's Zynga produces, but the venture's product will still be Internet-based games made for those who don't want to waste time in front of a TV. Just like everyone else in the market, only a year or two later.

Is the ax falling at Ask.com? "There is indeed a big shakeup coming," a tipster tells Silicon Alley Insider, seeming to corroborate layoff rumors we reported earlier.

"This place was buzzing today that there will be layoffs here soon," an Ask.com employee tips us off. The tipster complains that since completing "a bunch of tests for new ways to make money, no one in my group has seen or heard from management [since] they had a pizza lunch the first week of January." It's the second Ask layoff rumor we've heard this month.

Too much viral video can make you sick. And your computer, too. CollegeHumor, Barry Diller's funny-clips compendium, has been caught infecting viewers with at least two categories of virus, Generic.dx and JS/Wonka. They're mild but annoying infections — the chlamydia and gonorrhea of the online world. One expects to find Trojans littering CollegeHumor's offices, not its website. The likely source?

The argument goes that IAC chairman Barry Diller is battling with John Malone over control of the company because he's never been the visionary he claims to be. Odd. He certainly seemed like one back in 1999. That's when he appeared on Charlie Rose to explain why his company, then called USA Networks, tried to acquire Lycos for $20 billion. Check out the clip. Nine years ago, Diller nailed the Internet. Though maybe not the Lycos deal.

IAC subsidiary CItySearch will share its reviews and other content over AOL sites such as AOL City Guide, AOL Local Search, and MapQuest. AOL will in return handle the serving of CitySearch ads. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. At least, not yet. [News.com]

A tipster tells us to expect a "big shakeup at Ask.com," including "change in product lineup and company direction." The shakeup "could effect CA and NJ office, Lots of SVP, EVP, VP, CTO types that probably are redundant." It's a vague and poorly sourced rumor, but with IAC and its chairman Barry Diller already under siege, such a shakeup certainly is plausible. Especially since — judging by M&A exec Jason Rapp, who was recently transferred to unspecified new duties — it may have already begun.

How will Barry Diller get John "Darth Vader" Malone to put down his light saber and end his fight for Diller-controlled internet conglomerate IAC? Shopping! According to the Wall Street Journal, evil queen Diller's approach focuses on cable shopping network HSN, and will go something like this: Come on, Johnny Death Star, it'll be fun! When I called you "insane" I meant "insane about a good sale!" HSN totally redid their interior, out with the shoddy gauche stuff and in with Sephora and Scoop NYC. They stock TONS of black, which I know is your favorite. What I think you'll like best is that the prices haven't even changed. If you act now, you can get the shopping network for the same low, low price I offered before — the rest of IAC, safely in my hands — and I'll throw in the extra 5 percent in quarterly sales HSN just posted at no additional charge. And if you call now, I'll also add the Nike champ I lured to run HSN. [WSJ]

Jason Rapp, one of Barry Diller's endless ranks of M&A execs, has lost his job. Or misplaced it, at the very least. A company press release says he'll get "management responsibilities in new growth areas" — but doesn't name them.

Despite the beating the IAC boss is receiving in the business press, Barry Diller showed up last night at the grandest party of Fashion Week, the bizarre event sponsored by Gucci for poor Malawian children each of whom could survive a decade for the price of the fashion label's more expensive accessories. By the internet mogul's side, as usual, Diane von Furstenberg, the fashion designer he wed in 2001. Which is as good a time as any to ask the age-old question: why on earth does 65-year-old Diller, an inducted member of the boy-loving velvet mafia, persist with such a sham of a marriage? (Clue: it's something to do with the good-looking baldie on the left.)

"If AOL came down in price to something ridiculous, we probably would look at it. I just doubt we have very much interest in it," says Barry Diller, announcing a loss at his internet conglomerate, IAC, which owns websites such as Ticketmaster and College Humor. Translation: Hogwash! It's touching that you reporters and analysts still pretend that I'm a big swinging mogul. I've got angry shareholders breathing down my neck, and I can barely retain control of my own company; there's no way I can handle another troubled business. In any case, the yacht needs new carpeting.