The billionaire investor for years pushed, prodded and shouted to shake up Motorola, a cage-rattling that ended last December with the breakup of the company into two pieces.

Now, Icahn is making a fortune from Google’s plan to buy Motorola Mobility, one of the siblings that resulted from the breakup.

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There is a precedent for social buying site Groupon walking away from a $6 billion offer from Google, if that’s exactly what happened.

Let’s call it: The Zuckerberg Gambit.

That would be in reference to the famous series of no’s that the then flip-flopped co-founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, gave to a series of suitors who came calling with big bags of dough to buy the social networking site.

There were media suits from Viacom ($750 million). And Internet suits from Yahoo ($1.1 billion). And software suits from Microsoft ($3 billion).

And, often over the objections of his much older and more experienced investors, Zuckerberg declined to be acquired.

Instead, he got massive funding by Microsoft and others.

Presumably, he had a dream of much more and, as it turned out, he was right.

Facebook is now valued at upward of $45 billion, although it has yet to test out that lofty figure in the public markets.

And Zuckerberg is the king of all he surveys, from a social networking point of view, at least.

Perhaps most ironic of all: Facebook’s success is scaring Google on a daily basis, so much so that it turned its local eyes to Groupon.

Interestingly, both Facebook and Groupon share common investors–Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners and Russia’s DST Global.

Those investors have often spoken of not selling out, and their start-ups seem to have that proclivity too.

Chicago-based Groupon and its CEO Andrew Mason, for example, have turned down two big money exits so far this year–$3 billion from Yahoo and presumably the one from Google.

Talk about no exit.

While there are sure to be conflicting stories over the next few days–Did Google get cold feet first? Was there a tussle over a breakup fee, in case of too much regulatory scrutiny? Were the cultural differences too much?–one thing is certain:

Now, Groupon is going to have to go for it, as they say in sports, and try to turn itself into a real-live business.

One would assume they worried about the difficulties of being absorbed into the Borg at Google and about the definite regulatory hurdles that might have been impossible to leap.

And, perhaps, they just thought they could do better on their own.

In many ways, it’s an admirable choice–whether it is a wise one remains to be seen.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

The acquisition talks between Google and Groupon have ended.

“It’s as over as these things get,” said one person close to the situation.

The reasons for the collapse of the discussions are not clear at this moment, but it seems to center on the decision by the social buying site to remain independent and perhaps go for an IPO.

There are sure to be conflicting stories over the next few days. Did Google get cold feet first? Was there a tussle over a breakup fee, in case of too much regulatory scrutiny? Were the cultural differences too much?

As BoomTown reported earlier today, the annual revenue run rate for Groupon is $2 billion.

Groupon gets to keep about half of that and the rest goes to the myriad merchants it strikes deals with worldwide.

That’s still tremendous growth since its founding in 2008.

And that’s why Silicon Valley search giant Google and Chicago-based start-up Groupon have been in talks in recent weeks about a mammoth acquisition at a $6 billion price tag.

Groupon had turned down a bid of $3 billion from Yahoo earlier this year.

Now, it’s likely that the company will begin a new funding process.

Its closest competitor–LivingSocial–just got $175 million in a strategic investment from Amazon.

Chicago Breaking Business first posted a report of the talks ending, also citing a desire to be independent on the part of Groupon.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Mark Pincus can sure talk a blue streak. Mark Cuban can easily be classified as a chatterbox, both online and off. And Marc Andreessen certainly knows how to keep up his end of the conversation.

In other words, the pantheon of famous digital entrepreneurs is full of blabby Marks.

But Mark Zuckerberg, not so much.

So, when watching “The Social Network”–the movie about the rocky origins of Facebook–a person who has known the co-founder and CEO of the social networking powerhouse even longer than BoomTown has leaned over and said, “The Mark in this movie has said more in 15 minutes than I have heard the real Mark say in the first few years I knew him.”

And how.

If you want to know, although critics are raving over it, it’s like a very talky, very geeky version of “The West Wing.”

The Mark Zuckerberg in the movie, as penned by master wordsmith Aaron Sorkin, is able to parry with top-notch lawyers and deliver perfectly crafted rejoinders one after the next to friend and foe alike.

He can conduct several conversation streams at once–so much so that a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend remarks that talking to him was like “being on a StairMaster.”

I’d agree with that statement about the real Mark, except that the effort is quite the opposite of being dazzled by wild verbal gymnastics.

In fact, unlike a lot of Internet moguls, it has often been a struggle to get him to be fully articulate about the company, due mostly to a more taciturn, awkward and incredibly precise way of speaking.

When Zuckerberg famously asked Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” in a television interview–”Was that a question?”–right after she asked a question, I shuddered in recognition at the exchange.

In that way, he is a lot like the original leader of AOL (AOL), Steve Case, a person who created the first major social explosion online while also being incredibly shy and terse in real life.

Actor Jesse Eisenberg (pictured here) playing Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” certainly has the clipped delivery and often furrowed brow down–but the rest is a dude I certainly would love a chance to interview.

That said, he also plays Zuckerberg as a dour and wary person, also nothing like the real thing.

While I am in no way a personal friend of Zuckerberg’s, I have spent enough time with him to say that he strikes me as someone who generally tries to get along with people and makes a big effort to seem like a regular Joe, despite his fame and, well, billions of dollars worth of stock.

That does not mean he can’t be a bit robotic in tone or that he is not very much in charge at Facebook–indeed, one thing the movie does show is how very much the company is a creation of his single-minded devotion, restless innovation and intense forcefulness.

What I found perhaps most interesting about the movie was that it seems to, in fact, make the very case it is not trying to make.

Which is that, as the movie Zuckerberg says to the trio suing him for stealing the basic idea for Facebook: “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.”

Exactly. Because even if Zuckerberg did swipe the kernel of an idea about making a social network about friends from the Winklevoss twins at Harvard University–which seems obvious that he did indeed do– they were still incapable of creating what he created, even if they had gotten bigger head start.

Though hysterically played by actor Armie Hammer (pictured here, who does both of the Winklevii), these two seem more like rich kids with good chins, great bods and not much else.

So too Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s original partner in Facebook, who got left behind and then diluted out of his stake in the start-up.

While that move by Zuckerberg and his new investors was probably too cute by a half–and they had to pay up later for it–the movie makes clear that Saverin did almost nothing to make Facebook what it was, except write an early check.

In fact, in one scene, it’s clear he does not even know how to use it enough to change his relationship status. This, I believe.

(Also, incredibly, that Justin Timberlake–who plays the devilish Sean Parker–can actually act.)

Finally, there is the part about the impetus for Zuckerberg to make Facebook–which opens the movie–over a bad breakup with a girlfriend.

Again, it would be great for the origins of Facebook to be that interesting, but that trick is only there to provide a good ending shot of Zuckerberg hitting the refresh button.

And, of course, to lay out the big question of whether or not Zuckerberg is an “asshole” or not.

That’s from “The Social Network” and not me, which at the end twists that grand theme again.

Instead, it posits via a woman lawyer–the only truly positive portrayal of a woman in the entire film, by the way–to the Zuckerberg character that: “You are not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be one.”

I am afraid that is not really true either, at least in my experience.

Sure, Zuckerberg has been diffident, has treated some friends shabbily (even recently) and has even been borderline disingenuous once or twice with me.

But that’s not that different from a lot of people I cover in tech and that does not make him that proverbial “asshole” of the movie.

Oh, I sure have known a few of those in my time covering Silicon Valley, but that’s a list I’ll keep for my movie.

Kidding. Sort of. (You know who you are.)

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: