Microsoft, harried by regulators in the 1990s, once lobbied Congress to cut spending on antitrust enforcement. Now, it's profiting from their efforts. The software giant's lobbying budget nearly doubled from 2006 to 2008, helping it sink Yahoo's deal to have Google sell ads for its search pages. The failure of that deal helped speed Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang out the door, and could set Microsoft up to win Yahoo's search business. CNET News]

A shaken world held its breath today as news surfaced that Winona Ryder was whisked to a London hospital after "falling ill" on a flight from LA. Nothing to see here, her publicist said this afternoon — unless you count the British Airways crew requesting a priority landing at Heathrow when an unnamed female passenger "required medical attention." That's our Winona!Ryder rep Nancy Buxbaum later explained that the actress was admitted only as a "precautionary measure," assuring the AP that there was no emergency and that Ryder was discharged in short order. The airline wasn't much more help, issuing only a statement that its crew radioed ahead to land as soon as possible to get the sick Oscar-nominee to a doctor:

A tipster sent in this photo of Facebook's business-development team, taken in bubblier times at a September offsite in St. Helena, north of San Francisco, where they played a croquet tournament. (Rules about wearing white after Labor Day don't apply in northern California's bubbly clime.) Now more than ever, Facebook needs to develop a business; can this crowd swing their mallets? Suggest a caption in the comments; the best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: godospoons for "Jerry Yang explains Internet to Best Buy employees." (Photo courtesy of a thoughtful tipster)

A man as famous as Brad Pitt is accustomed to enjoying a comfortable buffer between himself and any Jane Q. Psychotic with a Skype account. So when Oprah Winfrey ambushed him on today's broadcast with—delight of delights!—highly specific questions regarding his various Brangelina tribal markings from a flesh-curious fan on internet video phone, it's not entirely surprising that his reaction involved sweaty palms, fidgety body language, and lateral pupil vibration. Watch him squirm as he politely defers at first, then finally cuts Creepalina off as she launches into her description of the part of his body she probably thinks would make the best handbag. [Oprah]

Old-school journo Pete Hamill and Bill Kristol got together for a little argument, filmed by IFC's new Gideon Yago-hosted thing The IFC Media Project. As Bill Kristol is a sad joke and Pete Hamill is a legend, it was not really a fair fight. The topic, thankfully, allowed Bill to shill for his miserable lost war instead of having to defend Sarah Palin again. Hamill still schooled him. Kristol doesn't really think Americans need to see the "blood" and "coffins" that war creates, that way we can all feel much better about ourselves.

NASA deemed successful a month-long test of image transfers to and from the Epoxi space probe, currently 20 million miles away somewhere near Mars. Alleged Internet inventor Vint Cerf helped NASA design the enabling technology, known as Delay Tolerant Networking, a decade ago. (I know: What does that guy do now?)For NASA, DTN means not having to send exact signals at an exact time to a spacecraft. A missed connection can be tried again until it succeeds. If you've been around long enough, it sounds conspicuously like USENET back in the acoustic-modem days. NASA touts the technology's usefulness in communicating with deep-space robotic craft. Who are they kidding? The real win is that when human beings inevitably go back into space, they'll be able to keep up on Earthbound puppycams. (Illustration by NASA)

BREAKING: Six of seven CA Supreme Court agreed today to review the legal challenges to Prop 8 brought by married same-sex couples. Until they rule, all further same-sex marriages are suspended, and the status of those already wed remains to be determined. What are the chances they'll overturn the challenge? Slim, but they have done so in the past: "In 1966, the California Supreme Court struck down an initiative that would have permitted racial discrimination in housing. Voters had approved the measure, a repeal of a fair housing law, by a 2-to-1 margin." Hang in there, D.L. Hughley—we realize how confusing all of this can be! [LAT]

So yesterday we showed you "Why Obama Won", the website about how Obama voters are all imbeciles. There was a poll and stuff. 538's Nate Silver had a friendly interview with that site's mastermind, former radio talk show host John Ziegler. By "friendly" we mean it ends with "go fuck yourself" and a click. Related: back in 2005, the late David Foster Wallace wrote a really great profile of a nutty right-wing talk radio host for The Atlantic. Hey, you can read the whole thing online. Who was this host? Why, John Ziegler! Let's peek into his tortured mind!

We consider ourselves connoisseurs of beleaguered (but enthusiastic!) NBC chief Ben Silverman, so we were a little surprised when we heard that Kim Masters had published a rumor roundup on The Daily Beast today that included three whole paragraphs tracking speculation that Silverman might be gay. Had our gaydar been scrambled by distinctly unfabulous shows like My Own Worst Enemy and Project Lipstick, we wondered? Then we read the article, in which Masters (citing Defamer as her primary source) appears to lay out her entire same-sex case by mistaking some of our "funny ha-has" for actual, industry-pervading rumors:

[Update: We heard from Slate and they say there's no dude site in the works, though Slude is still an awesome name.] From a tipster: "Rumor is that Slate is spinning of another site, this one a counterpart to [new female-oriented spinoff] Double X, but for dudes. It is so far unnamed, but its codename around the office is Slude, and apparently they want Bryan Curtis to come back and run it." Bryan Curtis was always writing for now-dead Play, so he should have time! is now keeping busy as a senior editor for Tina Brown's Daily Beast. Know more? Email us.

So the Dow closed, terribly, under 8,000 for the first time in five years, Time Inc's chopping more heads, and we're still looking for your layoff stories! (Send them to tips@gawker.com.) Oh, and? Remember the sad layoff story we you told you about earlier—it was a "post-9/11 husband-and-wife double-whammy"? There's more woe:

Cheer Leaders: In giving visitors the rare curatorial opportunity to program two week of holiday-TV classics, The Paley Center has unearthed some seasonal gems from the deepest reaches of pop-culture oblivion. And we mean deepest — why settle for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer when you can enjoy rare treats including A Rugrats Kwanzaa Special, Lamb Chop’s Special Chanukah and Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol? Voters can select up to five choices from a list comprising 50 years of holiday specials, with the option to write in any favorites the museum might have overlooked. Which, of course, always brings us back to A Solid Gold Christmas. Vote early, vote often; winners will screen Dec. 10-24. [Paley Center]

Is Google becoming the king of the Web? Well, duh — that happened about five years ago, before anyone really noticed. But activist groups, now and again, worry about whether Google knows too much about us. Yesterday, Consumer Watchdog's John Simpson quizzes Google CEO Eric Schmidt about whether his company is doing enough to guard our privacy.You have to admire how Schmidt bats the question aside: Google engineers have thought long and hard about this, and concluded that protecting users' privacy would make pages load too slowly. What he doesn't mention is that this is a problem because the slower pages load, the fewer Web searches we make; and the fewer Web searches we make, the fewer ads Google can sell. Google could make the Web safe for our secrets, in other words — its whiz kids know exactly how to do it — but it would just take too long. The king has spoken.

Former MSNBC guy Dan Abrams seems to have noticed that his plan to start a PR firm made up of actively employed members of the media who will sell their consulting services to corporate clients is causing some uproar among people who believe that it would be a blatant conflict of interest for any journalist to be part of it. Which should include you, and anyone else who doesn't think members of the media should take outside pay for PR work. Abrams and his cohort in the project, former HuffPo media critic Rachel Sklar, offered long defenses of the idea to Daily Intel. Let's do some critical analysis, shall we?

Anne Hathaway has been teasing us for a while now about her mysterious new companion Adam Shulman, dropping anonymous hints about her "sexy" rebound from Raffaello Follieri before being snapped by the fledgling actor's side on a recent New Orleans sojourn. And today, an "insider" has another, less romantic theory as to why Shulman puts up with Hathaway foraging crumbs from his dinner plate: He's using her.Or so says a source who tattled to Page Six: "Adam is known as an opportunist. When he was at Brown [University], he went after all the heiresses. It's like Anne is addicted to losers." Hold it — can you be more specific? Because we've heard Hathaway isn't what you'd call a cheap date, and nobody actually dates for love in this town anyway, do they? Then again, he got this far without having to vaccinate any poor kids or build someone a house, so maybe he is all about the shortcuts.

Behold the splendor that is Mark "The Cobrasnake" Hunter, splayed in nothing but skivvies and white loafers across the fabled Endeavor conference table. (40-foot long Corian, white laminated glass, stainless steel, hand-carved by an ancient order of Unicorn Panda craftsmen—you know the one.)And how did the ubiquitous hipster documentarian penetrate the inner sanctum of Hollywood's Wormhole to the White House™? We're not entirely sure, but we know partner Tom Strickler signed off on it, and even answered some interview questions left for him on a whiteboard. (Cobrasnake: "What is the best advice you can offer someone starting in the mail room at Endeavor?" Strickler: "Work work work work work work.") There's also some great shots of life behind the scenes at the Hollywood power-brokerage—everything from 189-line telephones to bedraggled assistants to Strickler and his team of hardworking baby-devourers themselves. Ari Emanuel, however, is nowhere to be found. Nice work, Cobrasnake! Now put some pants on. More photos:

Yesterday Forbes named Katie Holmes' and Tom Cruise's 2-year-old daughter Suri, a child made of moonbeams and space rock, Hollywood's Hottest Tot. Not in a gross sexy way, but in a she-commands-a-lot-of-attention way. It's true! And she's gotten rather haughty and big of head about it lately. Why just look at the accompanying photograph. Click for larger. Image via Splash

Just because we're in the midst of a Great Magazine Die-Off, you may be under the impression that all magazines die equally. Not true! We Leading magazine scientists have identified four distinct varieties of magazine death. Each has its own special flavor of despair for all those connected with the deceased publication. Here they are, from most common to least:

Long-distance love affairs conducted only in the press are difficult to maintain — even moreso when one of the parties is carrying around a little bitty secret. So it is, then, that the relationship between CNN newsman Anderson Cooper and Real Housewives of Atlanta breakout NeNe Leakes appears to have culminated after weeks of Ellen-assisted flirting. At first, Leakes seemed flattered by Cooper's ardor, but in her current interview with People magazine, she appears to know exactly what she's up against:

No man is above the law — not even multibillionaire Google CEO Eric Schmidt. At least that's what we hear from a well-placed tipster, who says Schmidt recently confessed to having been pulled over by the cops last month in Los Angeles for talking on his cell phone while driving. (California law recently changed to require the use of a headset.) Oh, but it gets worse for Schmidt.We haven't gotten anyone from Google or Yahoo to confirm this bit, but we're told cops interrupted a call Schmidt was making to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to discuss how to get a proposed advertising deal past government regulators. The deal was blocked. Schmidt, who endorsed Barack Obama late in the election cycle and got tapped to his board of economic advisors, could use his newfound political clout to get the pesky law overturned. The cell-phone rule, or the antitrust one — we're not sure which one is more bothersome to him. (Photoillustration by Richard Blakeley)