IAC's Ask.com launched its Digg-infused answer to Google News today. But there's surprisingly little evidence of help from Digg in Ask's Big News, despite the project's all-too-long time spent in development. Why is that?

Digg and IAC's Ask.com search engine are getting close to launching an Ask-branded version of the popular headline-voting site. We'd heard in December that the two companies were working together. Indeed, the delay in the project's launch may have contributed to Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone's ouster. Without Lanzone, the project is continuing. IAC's hiring a general manager to run an unspecified website — which could well be the Digg-like news site.

In internet land, everybody's very excited about the Redmond software giant's bid for Jerry Yang's languishing internet directory. Where would a combination leave AOL? (Answer: without an obvious acquirer or partner.) What about the challenge to Google? (Finally, a competitor, financed by Microsoft's profits from its bloated operating system and office applications.) Most of the commentary is overblown. Fusing two mediocre internet units, Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo, will not magically produce a dynamic challenger to Google; merely, if business precedent is any guide, mediocrity on a greater scale. Unfortunately, the petrified traditional media companies don't know that. (They don't know anything really.) And that's why the creation of another internet behemoth would be so pernicious.

Are there any other suitors for Yahoo? Not really, according to CNBC. They shoot down a number of potential buyers including IAC, Time Warner, and News Corp. The pundits posit AT&T as the only possible mate. Henry Blodget pours water on that theory too. He talked to a "senior executive" at Microsoft who says "AT&T encouraged us to make the bid. They have no interest in buying Yahoo themselves." GIven the huge premium Microsoft is offering, they may run away with Yahoo without a fight.

We don't resent the IAC billionaire's lavish lifestyle. If Diller wants to spend $200m on the world's largest sailing vessel, the 300-foot-long Eos, that's his business. "Once you're in boats, you either go bankrupt or you keep going," Diller told Lloyd Grove.The rumored $200,000 spent on silverware alone? Diller is 65 years old, and has worked hard all his life; he likes to entertain; so no judgment. But the tycoon's biggest backer, John Malone's Liberty Media, may not look so forgivingly on the expense of IAC's fancy headquarters. The Gehry-designed building on the Hudson waterfront of Manhattan, easily accessed by yacht, was quoted at a surprisingly modest $100m. But that was before decoration. We hear the fancy Italian carpeting of the IAC boss' office suite may have cost up to $1m. And I doubt Diller paid that out of his own pocket. IAC peons, or agents of Malone: what's the story? (After the jump, Diller explains his passion for big yachts: "It's not about size.")

Excuses, excuses: IAC says its legal battle with major shareholder Liberty Media is "jeopardizing" its ability to release quarterly earnings next week. Perhaps so, but not nearly as much as IAC employees' efforts to circulate their resumes. [WSJ]

Barry Diller's IAC claims in filings that the internet conglomerate's largest shareholder, John Malone's Liberty Media, is trying to "cripple" its business. The Colorado billionaire, aka Darth Vader, is attempting a boardroom coup. Strong language, but we were hoping for something more colorful from the embattled mogul, who had called the corporate predator's effort "insane" and his claims "hogwash".

This clip from a 60 Minutes profile of IAC CEO Barry Diller which ran last summer bears watching again. Especially the last 10 seconds, in which Diller's wife and close advisor, Diane von Furstenberg, explains Diller's business philosophy:

What should Barry Diller do? The IAC boss is being hung, slowly, by his largest shareholder. And for good reason: although online commerce and advertising is growing, the internet conglomerate has shrunk in value from $22bn to just over $7bn over five years. Barry Diller's reputation as a canny businessman, built up over decades in the movie and TV business, is tarnished. IAC has proven completely unable to build new businesses; and the New York group has had little success with the assets it bought. Let us count the fuckups.

Having borrowed his empire, Barry Diller is now living on borrowed time. Former cable baron John Malone's Liberty Media is trying to break the sophisticated financial arrangements which give Diller control over IAC, his online conglomerate. Diller calls the effort "insane," "hogwash." But here's the reality: Diller owns 28 percent of the company, while Liberty owns 24 percent, according to the company's most recent proxy statement. Liberty, however, controls nearly 60 percent of the company's voting stock. Diller, in turn, has the right to vote Liberty's shares. This complicated entanglement is what Liberty and Diller are fighting about. Far more interesting than the legalisms is what it shows about Diller — and why Diller's so unhappy about it.

Barry Diller has, for a corporate titan, always had a fondness for colorful language. The IAC boss calls executives "sweetheart" (usually with a touch of queeny menace) when he's not telling them (with more macho aggression) to hit the fucking sidewalk and sell the ads themselves. In today's email to employees of his languishing internet conglomerate, obtained by Gawker, there's a new vocabulary. He dismisses an attempted corporate coup by IAC's biggest shareholder as "shenanigans", and John Malone's charges are "hogwash". (Like Britney Spears, Barry Diller affects an English accent when under stress.) Update: We had assumed the Anglicisms were inspired by Jonathan Sanchez, the New York internet group's chief communications officer and a favorite at the court of Diller. But an insider tells us Sanchez, known for introducing the word "cunt" into the IAC lexicon, was canned at the weekend. Damnation!

It is really, truly war between dark media lord John Malone and his apprentice in evil, ruthless IAC queen Barry Diller. Malone has filed suit to remove Diller from a series of shell companies through which Diller maintains a stranglehold in IAC; he also alleged some sort of "misconduct." Diller, in turn, said the following: "I am beginning to think these people are insane. Everything they cite is hogwash." Those "insane" people Diller refers to control about 60 percent of his company, so it's safe to assume Diller will keep siphoning their profit into his paychecks and smashing his company into pieces that can't be taken from him. [Wall Street Journal]

The fight between John Malone and Barry Diller is getting brutal. As Diller prepares to spin off several businesses, leaving a company focused on the Oakland-based Ask.com search engine, Malone's Liberty Media has asked a court to remove Diller from IAC's board and allow Liberty to appoint several board members, in an effort to seize control of the company. Liberty owns 30 percent of IAC, and holds 62 percent of the voting rights, but an agreement allows Diller to vote Liberty's shares, giving him effective control of the company. [WSJ]

HealthCentral just announced $50 million in funding. The round included a major investment from IAC and smaller contributions from prior investors Sequoia Capital, Carlyle Group and Polaris Venture Partners. HealthCentral operates several health-related websites, including the long-troubled DrKoop.com, which was once a publicly traded company a bubble or two ago. Here's how their traffic looked last year, according to Compete. It's nice and all, but stick around for the one comparing HealthCentral to WebMD. If I used the word pwnage, I would. But I don't.

It's so hard to know which corporate villain to root for. John Malone, the 'Darth Vader' of the cable industry, has built up a dominant stake in Barry Diller's IAC and is putting on the squeeze with a lawsuit. But the internet conglomerate's killer queen has learned well from his evil master: Diller is turning Malone's shares against him, siphoning off outsized personal pay while he buys playthings like the College Humor kids, and generally runs Malone's investment into the ground. (Confused? Here's Duff McDonald's explanation.)

On Friday, Citigroup's Mark Mahaney judged tech stocks on four criteria: International exposure, countercyclical hedges, least risk to 2008 Wall Street estimates and intrinsic valuation. Which means what? Dunno. Go to Seeking Alpha for that. But to find out if your company's on the OK or Not-So-OK list in light of this morning's Fed rate cut and stock-market dive, check out this list.

23/6 is the political satire website from the Huffington Post and IAC. You know, sort of an Onion for the crowd that goes to College Humor for the biting wit. Now's your chance to get the sure-to-be-valuable commemorative 23/6 t-shirt! Look how excited one recipient is:

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg may be getting all the money and media attention lately, but News Corp.'s MySpace still dominates when it comes to traffic. The site commands more than 70 percent of visits to social networks, according to this latest chart from Hitwise. Still, its share declined 8 percent in the last year. Which might explain why News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was rumored to be poking around runner-up social network Bebo recently. Oh, and by the looks of things, maybe Barry Diller should have acquired MyYearbook for IAC back when he reportedly expressed interest.

Word now comes that Liberty, former cable baron John Malone's company, has opportunistically paid $340 million for 14 million shares in Barry Diller's IAC, raising its stake to 30 percent. IAC, too, repurchased 6 million shares at the same time. That means that Diller must have begrudgingly consented to the sale; at the same time, he reached an agreement that prevented Malone from taking a bigger stake in the online conglomerate. But who was the seller?

What's the meaning of the terse statement that billionaire John Malone has increased his stake in IAC to 30%? IAC's Barry Diller is pretty menacing, in a killer queen fashion. But Malone is the one tycoon that all the others, including Diller and even Rupert Murdoch, are scared by. His dealmaking ruthlessness is such that the Liberty Media boss was nicknamed 'Darth Vader' by his peers in the cable industry, in which he made his first fortune. In October, Malone bluntly told the Wall Street Journal he thought Barry Diller was no longer bringing value to Ticketmaster, Ask.com, College Humor and the other sites IAC owns. "The hook is set. It is our company," he said of IAC. "Barry ain't going to be able to spit the hook." By dropping the news on a Friday evening, Barry Diller may minimize his public humiliation. But that doesn't alter the reality: he's bent to Darth Vader's will.