NICK DOUGLAS — Dennis Crowley announced Sunday night that he's left Google. (His friend Andrew Krucoff scooped him.) The Dodgeball founder said that the company had never given his team the resources they needed to maintain and expand the location-texting service. "The whole experience was incredibly frustrating," he wrote on a group blog. Crowley posted the same story on Flickr, where he also commented that he and co-Dodgeballer Alex Rainert left "regardless" of their Google stock (or options) vesting schedule. "Regardless"? Ha! Google bought Dodgeball 23 months ago. One would assume his contract made him stay two years to collect a stock or options bonus, and Crowley can't be dumb enough to walk away one month before payday. Assume he and Rainert got their money's worth out of these dreary two years — and they sure deserved it, having to sit back and watch startups Twitter and Jaiku take over the group-messaging field. The next question is, will Google shutter Dodgeball? (Photo: Dennis Crowley)

Not since Biggie vs. Tupac have the East and West coasts been embroiled in as bloody a feud as Dodgeball versus Twitter. Since the former was acquired by Google, it's been the subject of occasionally surfacing rumors that it may be culled or consolidated inside a broader Google mobile offering. Twitter user cee-dub plants a rumor that Dodgeball.com may be about to "go dark"; no clue whether he means just the website or the service entire. Concur or dispute?

Cookie, Conde's newish mommy mag, brings word of a new cell-phone alert service. Much like Dodgeball, the New York-based program that texts you every time Andrew Krucoff takes a crap, Family Watchdog also alerts you to the comings and goings of a certain class of people; in this case, sex offenders.

Getting bought by Google is one thing (or, more accurately, up to 1.65 billion things), but a company doesn't really belong to the family until it's been properly adopted. That's why Dodgeball, the three-man startup that lets users mass-text each other from bars or restaurants, seemed like a foster child after Google bought it and seemingly abandoned it. But this week that changed.

• New York-based e-mail startup Daily Candy gets a sweet deal: an investment valuing the company at $130 mil, which lets the company take down its "For Sale" sign and get back to the important business of making urban women feel inadequately shoed. [Gawker, link being fixed]

Re-educate yourself with this morning's Valleyspeak lesson. Ten points every time you use one in a sentence!

Surprise, surprise. Om Malik says that Google Calendar will follow the new company strategy: take something old, mock it up in Ajax, and shove it out the door. [GigaOM]
Doucheball: the Dodgeball for people who suck. [Brother Lawrence on Flickr]
BlowTheDotOutYourAss (pictured): more dot-coms you don't want. [BTDOYA via supr.c.ilio.us]
Tip beg: Anyone have insider info on Yahoo suing wireless content startup MForma? The MGM of Silicon Valley accused the former Yahooers at MForma of stealing trade secrets. There a legitimate case here, or is Yahoo's new policy "If we can't keep 'em, sue 'em"? [CNET]
And a remaindered video: a UFO-like sighting of what definitely isn't Google's secret OS. [YouTube]

· The O.C.'s Mischa Barton is in negotiations to star in Dino de Laurentiis period drama The Decameron, based on the 14th century literary classic that no one within a 300-mile radius of Los Angeles has ever heard of. [THR]
· Adam Sandler's proves his Happy Madison Productions exists solely to keep his underemployed friends in mortgage payments, producing Bench Warmers for Rob Schneider and David Spade. Make up your own idea for a logline, you'll probably get it in fewer than three tries. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· In a move we're sure has NOTHING to do with Pixar's Cars move, DreamWorks pushes Shrek 3 to 2007. Why not just hold it until the Apocalypse, Katzenberg? It's a great time for opening family fare. [THR]
· Wayne Brady and Frasier scribe Saldin Patterson set up a legal comedy at NBC. Suicide, cutting, and vomiting to follow this item. Not in that order. [THR]
· DreamWorks renews its deal with Ben Stiller's Red Hour production company, banking that it will get more DodgeBall than Duplex. [Variety]

Last night, we cut the rusty chains that bind us to this computer to attend the Celebrity Dodgeball Tournament at the Palladium, a benefit for the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation (and sponsored by Fox to celebrate yesterday's DVD release of their promotionally-convenient film concerning red balls and the triumph of the underdog).