The trouble, it appears, started last week, when someone leaked news of the takeover talks to TechCrunch. Normally, such leaks come from the target—in this case, Yelp—in the hope of driving the acquisition price higher.  (Such articles are the equivalent of "Going once, going twice..." exhortations at auctions.) 

Alas, this tactic can backfire, which is why you don't see such articles appear before EVERY deal is announced.  Sometimes, when people agree to keep negotiations confidential, they actually keep them confidential.  And, sometimes, the party that doesn't leak takes the leaks personally...and cuts off the negotiations.

A few days ago, when someone cut off the Google-Yelp negotiations, the Yelp camp quickly got to work, spinning the decision to end the talks as a Yelp decision.

This provoked an unusual response from the Google camp, in the form of an article in the New York Times suggesting that Google, not Yelp, had cut off the talks.  Today, a source familiar with Google's thinking confirmed to us that Google walked because "Google is determined not to have deals negotiated through the press."

Now, it is clearly possible that both sides are furiously negotiating through the press, but at this point in the proceedings, Google is doing it better.  Yelp looks like it overplayed its hand.  And if the deal is to go through, it's now up to Yelp to go crawling back to Google and beg forgiveness.

In the meantime, however, inquiring minds want to know, who screwed up? 

Was it Yelp's management, going behind the back of their superstar banker, George Boutros (right) of Credit Suisse?  Was it a team-screwup, in which all parties agreed to use TechCrunch to try to jack the deal price up, only to watch the tactic blow up?  Or was it George himself, who underestimated the resolve of his once- and future-client, Google, and wrecked a deal for his current client, Yelp?

(Or, alternately, did Yelp roll the leak dice wisely, believing it CAN get a lot more money if it goes public or sells to someone else—a perfectly reasonable gamble that, depending on how events unfold, could just leave Google just looking Scrooge-y and embittered?)

Inquiring minds want to know!

Evan Williams invented Twitter, and now he's invented the ultimate Twitter review, in which you don't even need to watch the movie in question.

Political writer Chris Lehmann got a preview screening of the post apocalypse. In line at the supermarket, naturally.

Director Kevin Smith, hopeless romantic.

Advice columnist Penelope Trunk was dreaming of a White (Lie) Hannukkah.

"No really, have another. It's deductible!"

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She is on Twitter, at least; not only does she follow the Google CEO on her @teflonblondie account, but the Burson Marsteller flack also tracks him on the much more selective @momnet, where he joins Demi Moore as one of just five followed accounts. We've been told the @momnet account is Simon's, and that seems obvious enough: It's owned by "marcy" and Simon retweets its content the very instant it goes online.

Her relationship with the nominally married Schmidt, whether professional or something more, does seem to be humming along again: Our tipster says the pair were spotted together in Los Angeles, at the opening of The Little Seed, the organic cosmetics company co-owned by Punky Brewster actress Soleil Moon Frye, who Simon and Schmidt both follow on Twitter.

As interesting as Simon's make-up shopping may be, we're more intrigued in the bridal jewelry retailer she's become a fan of on Facebook. A client? A friend's shop? Or is something more interesting brewing? We might feel uneasy asking such a personal question if this wasn't totally innocent, public information (per Facebook), and if virtuous people like Simon had any use for secrets (they don't, per Schmidt).

There's been a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, after all, as True/Slant's Kashmir Hill has written. Facebook altered its Privacy Policy to strip protections from data like friends lists and profile pictures. But it turns out you're not allowed to do that by fiat, you need to explicitly get permission from users, something Facebook's "transition tool" failed to do, even as it allowed users to keep other types of data private. Writes Hill, a sometime legal blogger:

In 2004, Gateway did something similar, changing its privacy policy to make it okay to sell information it had gathered for Hooked On Phonics users to third parties. It got into trouble for that. It had to revert to its old privacy policy, and pay a fine. (A little one, just $4,000.)

And then there are the private lawsuits. They're inevitable, right? Facebook is already on the hook for $9.5 million it agreed to pay to settle a class-action suit over its Beacon advertising system. The lawyer who prosecuted that case is busily milking this new legal field; he's now suing Netflix for upwards of $2.5 billion for allegedly violating its privacy policy.

Facebook's last payment of $9.5 million is not a huge dent in a company that will make more than $500 million this year. It looks like the next payout one should be bigger — or it's just a cost of doing business (as usual).

Google is in advanced talks to pay around $500 million for Yelp, according to a story from TechCrunch confirmed by the New York Times, which described the talks in straightforward business terms: "Google has been showing greater interest in the local business market in the United States."

But Yelp isn't just any online content startup. It wields disproportionate power over local merchants, from restaurants to auto body shops, and said merchants have repeatedly told tales of Yelp offering to let them re-arrange reviews if they took out ads — and of disappearing positive reviews in retaliation when they complained about the ethics of the situation. The San Francisco-area alt-weekly East Bay Express ran a series of articles on such practices, and the story eventually went national.

One business owner got so frustrated with Yelp users — and Yelp Inc.'s passive aggressive handling of her — that she ended up in a wrestling match with a reviewer she had flamed on email.

The company is also known for its raging, drunken, fleshy user parties, which are thrown, alternately, by the company itself and by the restaurants subject to its users' reviews.

Google has already seen its reputation as the "Don't Be Evil" internet company erode significantly, most recently after CEO Eric Schmidt said people should consider not having secrets, a story that spread widely online and in the news media. If it's going to seduce Yelp, Google should make sure its remaining friends know the company plans to reform its new toy rather than join its caddish pursuits.

(Top pics: Yelp co-founder Russel Simmons has fun with an employee at a Yelp holiday party, from this Valleywag post.)

Like other blogging networks, Twitter is nothing if not a massive judgment machine, and users pounced on the chance to render a verdict on Ross, a mommy blogger and avid social networker: Her tweeting was inappropriate; her tweeting was a natural way to seek comfort; and, inevitably, her tweeting caused the death. The last is the thesis most prominently advanced by writer Madison McGraw, who tallied 75 tweets from Shellie on the day of the death, prior to her son slipping into the pool:

Anyone that has ever spent any time on Twitter knows that answering replies and sending out messages can literally eat up your time... her son... might still be alive if Military_Mom interacted with her son like she interacted with people on Twitter.

Of course, this is the sort of thing people have always whispered behind one another's backs in even the smallest, most tightly-knit of communities. Now people will just scream these accusations in your face, online. It's enough to make you nostalgic for the old biddies.

(Pic via)

Lindsay Lohan continued to roll with a classy, sober crowd.

Actor Sara Gilbert's snark is the gift that keeps on giving.

TOO LATE, MEDIA CONSULTANT JEFF JARVIS.

Did Martha Stewart call each housekeeper this morning and instruct them on what fleece to wear? What else does she use her "big bowl" for? What sorrow is she drowning is such a staggering trough of eggnog? The domestic media mogul's holiday tweet raised more questions than it answered.

It's called sugar, AP. Give journo-geek Tom Cheredar a little of it, already.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

The campaign site only shows the most recent 30 comments. But even from this very limited sampling, a common theme emerges: Whitman isn't paying any attention, despite her promise that "you will hear directly from me" on her "California forum." She's neither answering, nor even censoring, her critics. Chaos!

It's a good thing Whitman has never run a major website with a large and vocal community before, or this might reflect poorly on her management skills.

Think about it: The cast of this narrative-less saga now includes Woods, his wife Elin, her mother, and of course the more than 10 mistresses, each one with her own, growing internet dossier. We tried keeping up on our site but sort of gave up after trying to sort through the daily, disconnected crush of info and bits. (See: TMZ or anywhere else on the web. The internet may be groaning under the hourly tick-tock of Woods' life and lies unravelling, and the photos, audio and videos, but it's also only the web — not just technologically, but also the newish ecosystem of news and gossip sites that are eager to turn every bit of this story into traffic gold — that could handle the Tiger Woods story.

Sure, it all started in print, with a National Enquirer story on Tiger's "Cheating Scandal." But Woods' disgrace immediately mushroomed into something so huge and fast-changing that it became impossible for magazines or even daily tabloids to keep up. The Enquirer article precipitated a fight between Woods and his wife; then a car "accident;" then the truth about said accident; then an apology, a torrent of new mistresses; another apology, etc. etc. etc.

The volume of information grew exponentially, as each new skank became the nexus for loads of new information and media. (And photo galleries!) Rachel Uchitel, the original "mistress," remains the biggest of these sub-stories, with rumors about how she ran a sort of ad-hoc brothel for Woods; that she dated him; that she was going to reverse her denial of the affair; that she didn't because she'd been paid off by a magazine; and on and on.

But the other women have generated plenty of news, too, from the second madam (no one thinks he actually boned her, we were eventually informed) to the onetime stripper (she didn't immediately disclose this past occupation, outrageous!) to the porn star (who wouldn't deny the affair) to the Butter hostess (she got hotel suites) to the friggin' Perkins waitress (who Tiger supposedly had sex with in a church parking lot; who Tiger liked to spank; who Tiger called "rag doll;" who Tiger liked to... you get the idea).

Then there was news about Tiger's rapidly disappearing endorsements; about his marriage; his exit from golf. Even if you wanted to try and cram all these different threads of news and gossip and speculation and debunking into a celebrity weekly every week, you couldn't. Which is what make the degenerate ecosystem of Woods news something special: It was sprawling, it was deep, it unfolded over a long period of time. It was too big to fit anywhere but online.

The Web had a bonanza with the Eliot Spitzer scandal, too, but after the initial news, tearful apology and quick orgy of Ashley Dupre photos, the news quickly dried up. Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky broke in a uniquely internetty fashion, when Web gossip Matt Drudge ran the story Newsweek refused to touch. The subsequent coverage was, indeed, endless. It was also about just one woman who wasn't saying much, and then about one political fight. Each revelation was tidy enough to fit in a sliver of the daily newspaper and to comprehensively summarize in a weekly magazine.

Tiger Woods' apparently voracious sexual appetite created a scandal big enough to truly feed, and even sate, the ever-hungry Web. It's been an uninhibited bacchanal of mistress galleries, trashy YouTube embeds and gossip scooplets. So if the Tiger Woods coverage leaves you feeling exhausted, it's because the celebrity sausage factory has been running at an obscenely and unprecedentedly fast tilt. As with Christmas dinner, you might as well try and enjoy the feast, no matter what you think of the company. Because you'll have to do the whole thing again soon.

As we reported last night, Harsh — full name Griff Harsh V — was forced to withdraw from the university for a year, moving from the class of 2008 to the 2009 (thus presumably graduating last May. (The Daily Princetonian's seems to confirm the timing; the campus paper last year said ID'd him as a member of the class of 2008 but in January this year ran a correction saying he's really in the class of 2009.)

Our tipster, who lives in Princeton, NJ and says he knows the university well, says that the suspension appears academic, given Harsh's reputation as a not-so-bright legacy.

The Whitman kid does sound more like a boor than a bright light, given the party antics described in a campus magazine, which had the heir bragging that his wealth protected him from obnoxious behavior.

But the heir may have another reason for his brashness: According to our tipster, the university assigned one of the toughest guys on campus to be his roommate, the lacrosse-playing son of a New Jersey real estate developer.

The bodyguard roomie was probably the doing of Momma Whitman, who is very concerned Griff might be kidnapped, our tipster claims. Having donated at least $30 million to the university, she wouldn't have much trouble wielding influence with the housing office. Her fears would also help explain why we haven't been able to find any pics of her son on the internet, save for the tiny thumbnail above.

Genuine or not, Whitman's protectiveness over her son provides a ready-made excuse to avoid all discussion of and appearances with him on the campaign trail. Whitman can hardly be expected to answer questions about hearings and suspensions when she's trying to prevent an honest-to-God kidnapping, right? If only the Republican had some similar excuse to avoid answering questions about gay marriage rights.

The real news is horrible enough without the added layer of internet deception. During what police described as a domestic dispute with his wife fiancée, Henry tried to jump into the bed of a pickup truck in which his wife was driving away. He fell and was later found lying on the road and rushed to the hospital. He died at 6:36 am ET this morning.

But Henry was reported dead approximately 12 hours earlier on Twitter. Real and fake deaths were bound to bump up against one another on the microblogging service sooner or later, by sheer chance. Twitter supplies a steady stream of misinformation, including most prominently the prematurely reported death of actor Patrick Swayze, outrage over an Amazon gay book ban that never existed, and the false news that California courts had overturned a gay marriage ban.

The Henry death scam was, as these things go, relatively sophisticated, perpetrated by a scammer who went to the trouble of changing his screen name to "Gerry," calling himself a "Sports Reporter for Dallas Morning News," and attaching a picture of real-life Morning News columnist Gerry Fraley, plus a link to Fraley's page on the newspaper's website. With Cincinnati Bengals receiver Henry known to be in the hospital following a car accident, it would be easier to pass off fake news:

These reports were flatly denied by one of the supposed "sources," and the fakester was even outed by the real Gerry Fraley as fake. An enraged Twitter turned ferociously against the scammer (except for a few people who later insisted he'd been proven his correct, despite the 12 hour gap between his false tweets and the actual death):

The Dallas Morning News must be thrilled with all the people who still think the scammer worked for the paper. Welcome to microblogging, printies!

Griff Harsh V was a member of Princeton's class of 2008 (among the first classes eligible to live in Whitman College, which his mother donated $30M to build) until mysterious circumstances and a disciplinary hearing forced him to withdraw for a year and join the class of 2009 instead. Perhaps the infraction had something to do with Griff's documented pigheadedness when he drinks? Quoth campus rag The Nassau Weekly:

Overheard at Charter [eating club]

Griff Harsh (Meg Whitman's son) throws beer in Guy's face.
Guy: You can't do that to people.
Griff Harsh (points at himself): Billionaire.

What was Griff's disciplinary infraction—and did Meg's money affect the proceedings? (Also: How is it possible that a college-aged heir to an internet fortune is not depicted anywhere in the whole of the internet, but for the above microscopic thumbnail? Is Griff the only human in America to whom the new Facebook privacy settings do not apply?) For the good of California: tips@gawker.com if you know. [NassauWeekly]

Niche Media's Jason Binn is in love with the idea of child labor.

Nick Denton, the richest man at Gawker Media, was not above reveling in a New York Times writer's misfortune. He really didn't like that article, apparently.

Fox News Channel's Molly Stark Dean is glad she doesn't have to deal with spoiled, insulated children of wealth, at her conservative news network, owned by Rupert Murdoch and his kids.

The National Organization for Women is not at all impressed by your sex "app," Cosmo.

MC Hammer approves of white venture capitalist rap battles. Who knew?

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

1. Hide group and page memberships

Facebook changed its formal Privacy Policy to say that "pages you are a fan of... and networks" are now totally public information (along with many other things). There's apparently no setting to shield page and network data, which leads to terrible situation like this one, sent in as a reader plea:

All of a sudden my grandmother can see that I belong to the Queer Graduate Student Union and Open Relationships Networking Group. Please help. I can't bring myself to de-friend my grandmother!

UPDATE Dec. 17: We're not sure if this is new, but this can now be changed by going, confusingly, to "Application Settings." Go to the "Settings" menu at the top right of your profile page, then select "Application Settings," then scroll down to "Groups" and select "Edit settings." Set to "Only me" (click to enlarge):

Thanks to the tipster who walked us through this. Sadly, even as one privacy mystery was resolved, we were made aware of another. See below.

2. Block Facebook activity from appearing on your wall

There used to be a setting that allowed users to prevent Facebook activity from automatically showing up on their Facebook wall, thus blocking updates like "John commented on Jane's picture," "John is now friends with Bob," "John is attending Uber Gay Circuit Party 2010," etc. This setting is apparently gone, and you have to remove such notices one at a time.

Writes one tipster:

It is extremely annoying not to mention a complete tell of how often I use Facebook during work hours:)

3. Prevent strangers from friending you

It used to be you could keep non-friends from sending you a Facebook friend requests, although they could confirm. That's not the most, well, social way to use a social network, but judging from our email, it was a frequently used and valued feature. Wrote one Gawker regular:

Before the changes I wasn't searchable on FB and hence friended only those I wanted to friend, in essence, I would initiate the request. But... I am now getting friend requests from people I don't know, or worse, from people I know but I don't want to befriend on FB...

Facebook now makes you offer the "Add friend" option to all friends of friends — you can't restrict any tighter than that, so strangers can still send you friend requests. Screenshot (click to enlarge):

4. Completely hide friends list

Your friends list, too, is considered public information. Though you can remove it from your profile, you can't keep friends of friends from seeing it. They just have to pull up one of your friends' friend list, click you name, and view your friends list.

Writes one reader: "Many of us are concerned, seeing as how there are thousands of people faced with the threat of stalkers." Another, right on cue:

I have been dealing with a deranged, threatening stalker... There is no way of keeping your Friend list private... I have been obsessively reading about this topic [overall Facebook privacy]... To say I'm outraged is an understatement.

We thought Facebook might be improving this, but we continue to receive emails like these, and Facebooks written Privacy Policy still states that friends lists are now public information.

5. Block Wall announcements that you've been tagged in a photo

You can keep photos of yourself out of the "Photos" tab on your profile, even if they've been uploaded by other people. But it seems you can't block from your Wall announcements that you've been tagged in someone else's photo , which sort of defeats the purpose: It leaves your profile as a very convenient central location for any incriminating pictures of yourself.

You can remove each notification manually, but that becomes a game of whack-a-mole.

Wrote one Facebooker:

I've already blocked everyone from viewing photos that I'm tagged in, but I'd prefer that my friends not even see that I've been tagged in the small preview photo that gets posted to my wall every time someone tags me.

UPDATE: According to a helpful tipster, this can be disabled by going to the Settings menu at the top right of your Facebook home page, then to "Application Settings," then the "Photos" application, then click "Edit settings." Then click the "Additional Permissions tab," and there is an option to "Publish to streams." Uncheck this. Like so (click to enlarge):

UPDATE: 6. Profile photo

While it's possible to restrict your profile photo album, your main profile photo is one of the pieces of personal data that was forcibly made public by Facebook when it updated its formal Privacy Policy. The best you can do is upload a fake pic, or remove your profile photo entirely; there's no way to have a profile photo that only your friends see.

And more, we're sure

We'd love to be wrong about any of these privacy rollbacks, so if you know of settings or workarounds we've overlooked, do email us at tips@gawker.com. Conversely, if we've left out a lost privacy option you feel strongly about, let us know about that, too.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) originally said his social network's privacy changes were intended simplify and enhance the privacy experience on the site. Judging from our inbox, it would seem he's achieved neither.

Past coverage:
The Valleywag Guide to Restoring Your Privacy on Facebook, Dec. 15
Facebook's Great Betrayal, Dec. 14
Facebook CEO's Private Photos Exposed by the New 'Open' Facebook, Dec. 11

eBay executive Garrett Price is fighting with Craigslist in court over what, exactly, he said about his boss during business negotiations five years ago, according to NBC Bay Area. Craigslist, the online classifieds company, claims he confided a ferocious picture of Whitman:

[Craigslist CEO Jim] Buckmaster testified that Price told him that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman could go from "Good Meg" to "Evil Meg," and that in her frustration with Craigslist was leaning toward the latter and becoming a "monster."

Price, naturally, denies all this. Maybe he was awkwardly trying to set up a good cop/bad cop dynamic; he was negotiating to buy a stake in Cragslist at the time. But it all comes back to the bottom line: This kind of talk will haunt you, one way or another.

UPDATE: Added video of Buckmaster's testimony.

Their point: Yahoo made about 1 million euros per worker from Yahoo France alone last year, and used to hype how "it's important to have [locally] concentrated engineering activities... to innovate" in France, where it would base "one of [its] most important centers in Europe." Yahoo France's engineers will now stop working until Yahoo agrees that they shouldn't have to stop working. At least they're fact checking the internet company's hype along the way.

The investment firm, Russia's Digital Sky Technologies, led a broader group of investors in putting money into San Francisco-based Zynga, according to the New York Times. It's DST's second Silicon Valley conquest, following two investments in Facebook earlier this year that totaled $300 million and that allowed the social network to cash out employee equity.

Usmanov (pictured), who reportedly owns 32 percent of DST, comes with the sort of unsavory press clippings worthy of a long-survivng oligarch in anarchic, organized-crime-ridden Russia: He's been accused by a former British ambassador of being a "gangster and racketeer" and of close ties to mafia drug trafficking and, as we've reported previously, controversially tried to censor bloggers who linked to news of the accusations.

Then there was this, last year: After Usmanov bought a chunk of mobile phone operator Megafon through a holding company and from a fund called IPOC, a former Megafon shareholder said he had been physically coerced into selling his Megafon holdings to IPOC; he later disappeared from his bloodstained vacation home in Latvia.

Zynga is used to dealing in the dark fringes of the markets; it made loads of ad revenue off scammers who deceptively sold "learning CD" and SMS subscriptions to gamers trying to earn virtual currency and now faces a class action lawsuit. Now, despite all the company's talk about reforming its way back into the light, it is, in a way, going deeper into the shadows. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus once bragged about "doing every horrible thing just to get revenues right away." Let's hope, for his sake, he's not making such a recklessly calculated move now.