TechCrunch talks with Google and Facebook execs about Facebook's banning of Google Friend Connect earlier this week. For a quick refresher, Friend Connect is a data portability initiative from Google that allows users to upload their profile information from a social network like MySpace to a third-party site like a personal blog. Friend Connect is like a bridge from the social network to the third-party site, allowing in this case a user to interact with their MySpace friends from their blog. So why did Facebook ban Friend Connect? According to Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, the social networking …

Carl Icahn launched his proxy fight against the Yahoo board in a letter to chairman Roy Bostock on Thursday. Icahn said Yahoo "had completely botched" negotiations with Microsoft, and listed 10 replacements to stand against the board at the company's annual shareholder meeting on July 3. Icahn said he would move forward with a proxy battle unless Yahoo agreed to sell to Microsoft for $33 per share, which he described as a superior option for shareholders than remaining independent. However, Microsoft, as yet, has given no indication that it still wants to purchase Yahoo. Meanwhile, the billionaire investor continues …

Only one name in the "amazingly Internet-experience-free" proxy slate served up by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, actually has a lot of related Web experience, said BoomTown's Kara Swisher, and that would be Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, the man who sold Broadcast.com to-yes-Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999. A man with an impeccable sense of timing, Cuban sold the Internet broadcasting company a year after its "faux blockbuster" IPO, just as its shares were starting to slip. Then, just before the Internet bubble burst in 2000, Cuban unloaded all his Yahoo stock, becoming one of the biggest …

Yahoo, which never seems to budge unless it's prodded to by some sort of crisis, is scrambling to sew up a Google search partnership now that Carl Icahn has announced his proxy battle for control of the Yahoo board. Sources allege that Yahoo hopes to announce a new deal within the next week, adding that it won't be an exclusive partnership with Google. Instead, Yahoo plans to allow the major search providers like MSN, AOL, Ask.com and anyone else to bid for the right to serve Yahoo ads tied to keyword searches. Think of it as AdWords for search …

PaidContent.org talks with Internet ad industry giants about CBS's $1.8 billion acquisition of CNET, who say it's hard to find a downside to the deal for either company. Tim Hanlon, EVP-Ventures, Publicis' Denuo said, "It's a smart, focused vertical buy that gives (CBS) credible content in the tech genre that can easily be leveraged across multiple CBS properties, especially radio and news." Former AOL Platform A chief Curt Viebranz thinks the move could revitalize CBS's "dying business." He said CNET gives the media giant another chance to prove that it can extract value from an important vertical player. "Remember …

A couple of years ago, Comcast Corp. tried to buy the Walt Disney Company. The idea was that marrying content and distribution would create an unstoppable media combination. And while a Comcast-Disney merger never happened, the same logic was behind News Corp.'s purchase of DirecTV. "We felt very strongly that we needed to have distribution. Content is king, but you've still got to get distribution," News Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch said in November 2005. But Murdoch was later forced to backtrack when he decided to sell the satellite TV provider to Liberty Media two years later. "Our content is pretty …

The long proxy battle between CNET and hedge fund Jana Partners looks to be over, as The Wall Street Journal early Thursday reported that CBS Corp. has agreed to buy the online news network for $1.8 billion. The price represents a premium of 45% over Wednesday's closing and is higher than any price the stock has traded at in over two years. The news sent CNET's stock up 42% in premarket trading to $11.30. CBS fell 3% to $24.10. CBS said the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, would make it one of the 10 …