Liberty Media, the owner of QVC and a random assortment of other media crap, has put in a billion-dollar bid for Barnes & Noble. What does a media conglomerate want with a book store, these days?

Liberty Media CEO John Malone told the Financial Times his company is ready to swap its $1.42 billion stake in Time Warner in order to acquire AOL's dialup business. There's just one holdup. "Time Warner still needs to divide the business," Malone complained to the FT. Though it's been more than two years since Time…

During a conference call to reports Liberty Media's second-quarter earnings, CEO John Malone told analysts the company was open to exchanging its stake in Time Warner for AOL's online access business. Liberty owns 103 million Time Warner shares, or about 2.8 percent of the company. Such a swap would value AOL's…

Hail the survivor! We'd heard that IAC dealmaker Jason Rapp's career was on the rocks. Turns out it was just in a deep freeze. Rapp has been named CEO of minor IAC property Gifts.com. The holdup?

"IAC/InterActiveCorp boss Barry Diller is pushing ahead with plans to break up his company into five separate businesses, and downplaying talk about a possible asset swap with Liberty Media...Diller said he hopes to complete the spin-offs by August." [Post]

"Fresh off his legal victory over Liberty Media, IAC/InterActiveCorp boss Barry Diller is expected to meet with his board this week to restart the process of breaking up his company into five separate pieces, The Post has learned. At the same time, sources said Diller and Liberty Media Chairman John Malone are…

So internet mogul Barry Diller won the struggle for control of IAC, the ungainly conglomerate which owns sites such as Ticketmaster and College Humor. Here's his celebratory announcement to employees. It's rather clunkier than one expects of the highly quotable IAC boss. Presumably Diller means, in the last line, that…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…