Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields and Shine Group Chairman and CEO Elisabeth Murdoch have formed a content start-up to produce across media platforms, both online and offline, with a focus on social engagement, according to sources.

The new venture, which does not have a name, is being financially backed both by Shine and by Shields, who left AOL this summer after running its community and communications division.

Shields engineered the sale of social networking site Bebo to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit for $850 million in early 2008.

Sources said this new company, based in London, will invest, develop and partner to create a variety of content offerings that also incorporate interactive and social networking elements. It will also help the vast array of Shine content in interactive efforts.

Shields will be CEO of the start-up, which will operate under Shine, an independent and private television production company with programming in 24 countries.

In the U.S., for example, its Reveille unit is responsible for such shows as “Ugly Betty” and “The Biggest Loser.” (Both of which are BoomTown faves.)

Shine’s fast growth has been spearheaded by Murdoch, who is the daughter of News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch.

But Elisabeth Murdoch has struck out on her own in forming Shine, which already has shown a strong interactive bent for a television company.

The combination of television and Web content is an arena that many are once again jumping into, aiming at creating branded interactive content, fueled by advertising.

Former NBC Universal exec Ben Silverman–who sold Reveille to Murdoch, in fact–has recently left his programming job at the television network to start a similar kind of company with longtime entertainment and Internet kingpin Barry Diller of IAC/InteractiveCorp (IACI).

And former ABC programming and Yahoo exec Lloyd Braun also runs a television and Internet production company with longtime Hollywood player Gail Berman, including recently creating the Wonderwall celebrity news site for Microsoft (MSFT).

In addition, Yahoo (YHOO) and a spate of small content start-ups, as well as big media companies, are all trying to figure out how to create and monetize content online in a multimedia effort that bridges all kinds of distribution vehicles and more deeply involves viewers.

Bebo was actually trying to do that too. Under Shields, it had been a pioneer in creating a variety of innovative online original content, including “KateModern” and “Sofia’s Diary.”

But new management at AOL, now headed by former Google (GOOG) exec Tim Armstrong, has sidelined Bebo to its new ventures division and is likely to try to sell it. Company execs at both Time Warner and AOL now say the purchase was a costly mistake.

That might be true, but it was clearly a financial coup for Shields–who has worked at both Google and RealNetworks (RNWK)–and Bebo investors.

And, given the track record of both Shields and Murdoch, it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today as its new communications czar is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

Garlinghouse came to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit after a year-long break, preceded by six years at Yahoo (YHOO).

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) CEO and chairman Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

But, given all the movement of late, this insider seat-switching seems more frantic than ever, as allegiances shift, competitors become friends and colleagues become rivals faster than you can tweet.

When he left Yahoo last summer, in fact, the digital chatter was that Garlinghouse would take a job either as a venture capitalist (he had been one once) or helming a start-up (that too, at Dialpad.com).

In fact, sources said, Garlinghouse had been considering two mobile gigs, but opted for helping to try to overhaul a troubled Web giant.

Fixing messes was the impetus of Owen Van Natta, who left a top job at social networking giant Facebook in early 2008 and by the end of the year, headed over to run Project Playlist, a controversial online music-sharing service.

But then he had hightailed it by spring to try his hand at reviving MySpace, as its CEO.

His boss, News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, did the same, getting the hook (unfairly to my mind) at AOL several years ago and then creating an investment firm with former MySpace head Ross Levinsohn.

The pair considered being part of a bid to oust Yahoo management in 2008.

Miller’s freedom lasted only until he got an offer that he presumably could not refuse from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch recently. (Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

The list goes on, chock full of ex-Yahoos, in fact.

Its one-time COO, Dan Rosensweig, left the company in 2006, for example, and joined the well-known private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.

But, soon enough, he was scooped up by Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to run its Guitar Hero division.

Yahoo Network head Jeff Weiner also departed from the Internet giant, in mid-2008, for a stint at two VC firms.

He landed at LinkedIn, the business-networking service where he was named CEO in late June.

Greg Coleman ran Yahoo ad sales until mid-2007 before taking a job at AOL earlier this year, which he lost after it got new management soon after.

At Yahoo, Coleman sparked with former advertising sales head Wenda Harris Millard, whom he ousted. She went onto Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) and left there this spring for the Media Link consultancy.

Presto! She is now helping MySpace’s Van Natta fix the social networking site’s ad business.

Current Yahoo U.S. advertising head Joanne Bradford actually came from Microsoft last summer, via her own short visit to the troubled ad start-up SpotRunner.

Former Yahoo search techie Qi Lu now runs digital for Microsoft (MSFT), along with a big gang of ex-Yahoo techies he has recruited.

And Scott Moore is even better at the switcheroo. He was at Microsoft running MSN U.S. content, switched to Yahoo as its media poobah, left last year to consider a start-up and then headed back to Microsoft as head of U.S. content this year.

But former Google (GOOG) execs have also been busy shuttling hither and yon, mostly to innovative start-ups.

Of course, many find refuge at Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg, PR major domo Elliot Schrage and many more) and Twitter (GC Alexander Macgillivray and COO Dick Costolo).

Recent departures–such as Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who landed at Accel Partners for now–are also likely to find new homes soon enough.

And, of course, there’s always Garlinghouse’s new boss, former Google ad head Tim Armstrong, who took over at AOL earlier this year.

We’ll skip former Joost CEO and former Cisco (CSCO) exec Mike Volpi (who is now a VC); former Netscape Communications/short-term VC/ex-banker/current-for-now CBS (CBS) digital head Quincy Smith; and Joanna Shields, who has worked at Real Networks (RNWK), Google and Bebo (which was bought by AOL)–for now.

Because, around and around and around it always goes, as you can see in this funny video below, which I posted previously:

[Musical Chair designed by Jacob Mathew.]

Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009’s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)

Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.

The Washington Post is reporting that Julius Genachowski (pictured here) will be tapped to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment, which will be announced in the next few days, to BoomTown.

Genachowski has previously worked for the FCC as its chief counsel under former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. But he is better known to Silicon Valley as a longtime Internet exec at Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI).

He is now a founder of a Washington, D.C.-based venture firm called LaunchBox Digital, which has invested in a plethora of unusually trendy Web 2.0 companies.

One of its investments, the social news aggregation service Socialmedian, was recently acquired by the German-based business networking site Xing for $7.5 million.

And Genachowski is also a co-founder and managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, another venture firm, and a special adviser at General Atlantic.

Perhaps most notably, he went to law school with President-Elect Barack Obama.

Thus, Genachowski worked the tech sector tirelessly for Obama’s election, along with organizing the campaign’s successful social-networking and online fund-raising campaign.

He was also clearly on the short list to be America’s first chief technology officer, which might be too light on policy-making and too heavy on pontificating for Genachowski’s tastes.

As top telecom and, really, Internet regulator, Genachowski will have a lot more power and even more on his plate, including the rocky shift from analog to digital television, now set to take place next month, as well as dealing with net neutrality and a range of other key Web issues.

But top of the agenda will likely be how to make real Obama’s promise to drastically improve broadband access across this nation and lowering prices.

The slow speeds and high costs are an appalling legacy of Washington regulators and politicians, who have lived too long and too deep in the pockets of big telecom companies.

That has made the U.S. exactly what Softbank founder Masa Son once called in an interview I did with him at a D: All Things Digital conference: the “Third World of broadband.”

Hey, Julius, you’ll fix that, right?

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I posted this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this third part, Diller talks about the new digital communications age and the explosion of video and then takes questions from the audience about tenacity versus stupidity in business, time management and where he is going to make “trouble” next.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this second part, Diller talks about the dire digital crossroads in Hollywood, the prospects for the Ask.com search service, his take on the Yahoo-Microsoft takeover battle (no one is a winner here), Google’s dominance, Facebook’s hype (Diller calls the hot social-networking site the “princess phone” of this era) and the power of interactivity.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this first part, Diller talks about the details of his court fight with Malone, why he wanted to break up IAC and what it is going to become all carved up, how he is getting back to content creation and also trying out other new online products and how Hollywood is “so inbred, it’s a wonder that the children have any teeth.”

Like I said, always clever.

Don’t miss this very good interview–does he ever give a bad one?–that IAC’s Barry Diller did with The Wall Street Journal’s Shira Ovide in today’s edition.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA), Diller finally broke apart the Internet conglomerate six weeks ago. His reason: IAC (IACI) had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

Here are BoomTown’s three favorite Diller killer quotes from The Journal interview …

On the breakup:

“I don’t have answers for anybody else. What I know is that internal complexity makes for superficiality. There’s never essentially a pure story unless there’s a pure product line that has its own shining clarity.”

On Internet advertising:

“You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. Social-networking advertising is being discounted because there is so much inventory [of available ad spots], and because methods have not yet been found to make it very effective. Will that get figured out? I absolutely believe it will. What form will it take? Absolutely unknown.”

On his fight with Malone:

“It is water down the drain. It’s unfortunate that executives of Liberty forced us into this process that resulted in the court affirming our position, but they did. It was hurtful to the company in which they’re investors, it was hurtful to me, it was a waste of time and money. It’s over. It certainly has no effect because my relations with John Malone are right and proper. They can have board members, but I outvote them.”

And, if you want more Diller unplugged, about all of the above and more, here is the highlight reel from my interview with him in May at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference.

Don’t miss his take on Hollywood children’s teeth.

The entire interview will go up next week in this blog, but here is the shorter video for now:

While Microsoft’s (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo’s (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang hemmed and hawed about what had happened in their disastrous takeover battle that ended not with a bang, but a whimper, everyone else who appeared onstage at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference last week was a bit more definitive about what should occur now:

Get it done.

From Thomson Reuters’ (TRI) Tom Glocer to IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller to TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers to Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. (NWS) (who simply said: “I’d get on with it.”), it seemed obvious to one and all that the only way either had a prayer of catching up with online search leader Google (GOOG) was to join forces.

It seems, according to many sources, that the pair are now in serious talks again, which–if they are smart–will come to some resolution, yes or no, within the next week. (You’ll get first wind of what’s what, as soon as much-frustrated bankers begin their leaking to major news outlets.)

Whatever the case, I dearly hope these discussions are not bogged down as they have been before.

Not in the bits and pieces niggling of some complex partial deal to buy search and spin of this and that here and there in a configuration sure to confuse everyone.

And not continuing with the endless roundelay of price negotiations that seems to have needlessly taken focus off the ball–which is to create a competitive alternative to the incessant brainiacs of Google (and if you want any more proof of that, see this New York Times piece today about the search giant’s data-crunching abilities).

It seems $33 to $34 a share will still wrap the whole thing up and, if Microsoft was serious about its intentions to buy Yahoo when it first made its foray in February, that seems doable.

Because, if Ballmer is serious about his contention, which he made fervently onstage at D6, that the software giant keeps “coming and coming and coming,” it simply cannot make that attack from a piddling 9% market share in the online search business.

One of the most interesting takeaways I had from last week’s interview Walt Mossberg and I did with him and Chairman Bill Gates (who seemed about as underwhelmed by a Yahoo deal as possible without slumping over asleep) was the early focus at the company on fiscal conservatism.

Baked into its DNA, as it turns out, is a fear of bankruptcy even.

While that was funny to hear about–complete with worried financial calculations on sheets of yellow paper stuffed in couches early on–it seems to continue to this day, despite Microsoft’s huge treasure chest of cash.

But Ballmer should slough off that tendency, as Microsoft can afford all of Yahoo and it should if it wants to make the boldest case possible that it will compete with Google.

As for Yahoo, both Yang and President Sue Decker are to be lauded for showing up to answer Walt’s questions (and one by me via remote video about leadership, which neither actually did answer) about the company and its future.

Their sincerity and love of Yahoo and its products and people was clear and even touching, making it clear that companies are a true reflection of its leaders.

But, while making good points about the he-said-she-said nature of the past Microsoft talks, the pair still could not adequately and passionately explain what Yahoo is exactly, which everyone I spoke to in the halls was surprised and even disappointed by.

Moreover, their weariness for the next phase of tumult that will come if Yahoo remains independent was apparent in both their body language and low energy levels, especially when compared to others onstage like Murdoch, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and, of course, the frenetic Ballmer.

Yang and Decker need big-time help and they need it now, help that cannot come from their own dwindling energies and that of their much-beleaguered troops.

Still, they also deserve credit for this very funny spoof video of advice they have been getting.

I especially like the turn by famed investor Warren Buffett best, with his “buy low, sell high” tip.

But I would fiddle with that to change it a little bit for Yahoo today: Just sell high enough.

Here’s the Yahoo spoof video:

BoomTown has known about it forever and Radar Online gave the lowdown about the creation of the hip-sounding news aggregator Web site–headed by high-profile editor Tina Brown (pictured here)–by Barry Diller’s IAC (IACI) in a report in early April.

Think the Huffington Post, but more culture and less political wonkishness in a bolder and more colorful design.

While still in its planning stages, though, it just hired a new GM to run the business: Caroline Marks.

She was GM of Comcast’s Ziddio, a social video endeavor, and was also head of content development for Comcast Interactive (CMCSA). Marks has also worked in several high-profile mobile companies in the U.K.

Marks will reports to IAC’s Nick Lehman–who works for Michael Jackson, the head of programming at IAC–to get the project off the ground for IAC and Brown, the former Talk, Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor.

The project has already hired Edward Felsenthal, the former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal (and BoomTown friend), to helm the edit side under Brown.

IAC has dabbled a lot in online content initiatives of late with mixed results. Still, it is moving forward with even more.

For example, the company is set to debut a personal financial site in a joint venture with News Corp.’s (NWS) Dow Jones (owner of this site), called FiLife, in June.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my partner Walt Mossberg and me.

D6 tech and media speakers include: Microsoft Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT); News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch; Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX); Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo (YHOO), and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

The pairing should make for a lively session, given all the heat around Yahoo of late, largely related to the scuttled attempt by Microsoft to buy the company.

What would you like to know about that and anything else about Yahoo?

As it so happens, you can ask!

While the conference is sold out, you can submit questions that you would like answered to Yang and Decker or any of the speakers via text or video. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose.

Ask early and often here!

In addition, the whole conference will be online at AllThingsD during the conference, via live blogs and reports of breaking news (and there will be breaking news, as there always is), along with video highlights.

And videos of all the interviews will be posted soon after it is over.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.

All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional negotiator–at the 6th D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my amazing partner Walt Mossberg and me (see us here at D5) and will take place May 27 to 29.

The conference, as we describe it on our Web site, is “unlike any other executive conference.” What we mean by that is that we try to determine the next direction of the digital revolution via unscripted and informal, but pointed, conversations about the impact of digital technology with industry leaders.

In other words, Walt and I needling at the major players of the digital sector, until they give up the good stuff.

The other digital and media leaders coming? That would be: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

To say our timing is impeccably planned would be undeserved–we had no idea so much news related to all these companies and their leaders would break out, from the tough economy to takeover battles to court face-offs to mergers to trying to create a whole new way of reading.

Also, there will be some–as yet under wraps–amazing demos onstage too.

While the analog conference has been sold out for many months, the action will be on the AllThingsD.com site throughout the conference with round-the-clock live blogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, as well as video highlights from stage.

In addition, we’ll be pointing all over the Web to important tech and media news that breaks at D6.

And we will also stream the entire conference in the weeks after the conference takes place, so ATD’s audience can experience the whole thing, even if they cannot all attend.

But anyone’s questions can be there, though–this year, you can submit questions to any of the speakers via text or video that you would like answered. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose. Ask early and often here!

Walt and I are very excited for D6, even after last year, when we brought together industry legends Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, for an historic joint interview.

At the time, Walt and I joked that we would not be able to top that amazing event (the video of the entire interview is below).

That interview was nearly unbeatable, but we also think that with the top-level interviewees we have assembled for D6, that it is game on.

Until then, here’s the Gates/Jobs video from D5:

Lanzone had been at the company, which is owned by Barry Diller’s InteractiveCorp (IACI), for more than a half-dozen years, before stepping down in January in a management reshuffle at the company that put Match.com CEO Jim Safka at the top of Ask.

At the time, Diller praised Lanzone copiously in a statement, but noted that “these changes are intended to strengthen and streamline the operating structure at IAC, both leading up to our intended spinoffs, and beyond.”

For those not following IAC’s tribulations of late, Diller is currently embroiled in a vitriolic fight over control of the company with one of its biggest shareholders, Liberty Media, and its voluble leader John Malone.

That’s no longer Lanzone’s problem, although he remains a consultant to Ask for a little while longer and is also an entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures. He told BoomTown that he is still trying to figure out what to do next, but wants to remain on the product side of the consumer Internet business.

I like Lanzone a lot, especially given the more innovative and even aggressive efforts Ask has made to gain ground and try to put a dent in Google’s market share in recent years, laudable efforts a larger player like Yahoo might have been trying as hard.

While we despised the high-concept Kato Kaelin ads (see it once again posted below the Lanzone video to see why) Ask used this summer, BoomTown does not blame Lanzone for them–paging Barry Diller! All is forgiven anyway, since they were junked.

In any case, here is a video interview with Lanzone done yesterday, in which we talked about where search was headed:

“I am beginning to think these people are insane. … Everything they cite is hogwash.”

That’s what is known as a classic Barry Diller, who can be relied on to come out with a good one when provoked.

In this case, the provocateur is Liberty Media’s John Malone (pictured on the right in this comic with Diller), whose company has headed to court to try to remove Diller from his job as chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

As chronicled by the always deft Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal today, the fight between the longtime partners is getting uglier still with–oh, let’s just admit it–totally confusing moves and countermoves about the fate of IAC and its subsidiaries.

Liberty has a giant stake in all of these entities and Diller, of course, has control of that stake. A recipe for mogul mud wrestling, if ever there was one.

But the fight is a serious one for a number of high-profile Web companies within IAC, which was being restructured to stop just this kind of fighting between Diller and Malone.

Just how Diller has gone about rejiggering it all, in complicated spin-offs in a way that allegedly undercuts Liberty’s control yet again, is what set the new round of tensions off.

Those sites embroiled in the fighting include: Expedia, TicketMaster, LendingTree and Ask.

As luck would have it, Diller will be interviewed onstage at the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital in late May, so there will be plenty to talk about!

The last time I interviewed him at the Monaco Media Forum last November, Diller let loose too, when he memorably scoffed at the $15 billion valuation for Facebook and Microsoft’s $240 million investment in the hot social network.

“If it was real money, it would be insane, but since it isn’t really, then why bother [worrying about it],” said Diller. “It doesn’t mean anything, it is a phantom, false valuation. Let them sell for $14 billion, $998 million, and then I’ll believe them.”

Here is a sampling of quotes from my one-on-one interview with him onstage at the Monaco Media Forum on Friday morning, taken from the not-so-audible audio of my Flip video camera. But you’ll get the idea of why Diller (pictured here) remains one of the more robust characters out there.

We began talking about the split of IAC into five parts, lopping off unrelated businesses, with the backdrop of a struggle he has been engaged in with Liberty Media’s John Malone.

Why do it? “We were being superficial managers,” said Diller. For example, of the mortgage business around LendingTree, he said: “I have little to no interest and that is not how I want to live my life.”

(Very few execs, I can assure you, will admit to rank corporate boredom about their businesses.)

But Diller was just getting started, taking shots at everything from the “dumb” Hollywood writers’ strike to the insanity of Facebook’s $15 billion valuation, as well as his own corporate shortcomings.

About the idea of synergy among his many properties, which he once touted effusively: “I still believe in synergy, but I call it natural law. They have to naturally fit into each other. The problem is that there was so much huffing and puffing to fit them together.”

(Again, it’s nice to hear someone admit when things just don’t work.)

Diller also took aim at Google, within a week of signing a big guaranteed ad deal with it for IAC’s Ask search network. “It has huge market share, and I don’t believe in the long run it will be able to keep up with it,” he said.

(In this, he is dead right, and the lack of search innovation at Google is troubling.)

While letting Yahoo off the hook for its management woes, Diller did marvel at Microsoft’s inability to compete in the online business. “Microsoft is a greater failure really, if you think about it, with a huge amount of capital and no real traction,” he said.

Diller also noted that the writers’ strike in Hollywood was silly, noting that the writers were striking over virtually nothing. “No one can solve an issue where there is no economic model yet,” he said. “Over the next five years, the market will develop, and at the end of that period, if the economic value is being created, [the studios] will sit in good faith and give [the writers] the money.”

(I am not so sure the writers should trust a bunch of execs who have shafted them so many times when it relates to technology, although Diller is correct that there are no real revenues to speak of yet.)

Lastly, he scoffed at the recent $15 billion valuation for Facebook and Microsoft’s $240 million investment in the hot social network, noting it was simply a move to thwart Google by the software giant.

“If it was real money, it would be insane, but since it isn’t really, then why bother [worrying about it],” said Diller. “It doesn’t mean anything, it is a phantom, false valuation. Let them sell for $14 billion, $998 million, and then I’ll believe them.”

Me too.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.