Ms. Whitman. (Photo: Max Morse)

The nuts and bolts of HP's $11.1 billion acquisition of Autonomy are pretty wonky. But we know a good scandal when we see one, and this $8.8 billion loss and the whole "fraud" debacle are shaking up to be one for the record books.

After losing all that money, HP pointed the finger at its subsidiary, alleging that cooked books had made Autonomy appear more valuable than it really was. If the HP thought the former Autonomy team would go quietly into that good night, the Silicon Valley giant was sadley mistaken. Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch has loudly maintained his innocence, and now Business Insider reports that he's started a blog to defend against the allegations.

The description:

This website is maintained by Dr Mike Lynch on behalf of the former management team of Autonomy. The site provides relevant information pertaining to the accusations made by Hewlett Packard (HP) on 20 November 2012 of financial impropriety at Autonomy. The former management team of Autonomy strongly rejects the accusations made by HP.

Thus far the blog is mostly placeholder, with an open letter to HP board dated November 27, an Autonomy timeline and the lengthiest legal notice we've ever seen outside of an iTunes terms of service agreement. But we're adding it to our RSS feed and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's tough to say who to believe here, but one thing is for sure: This is just the latest chapter in the sad, sorry history of corporate scandals at Hewlett-Packard, a company's had its dirty laundry aired over and over again in the most public of possible arenas. The company has had, count 'em, seven CEOs since 1999. CEO Meg Whitman was supposed to be a clean break with a past involving rampant leaks to the press, sexual harassment and gross infighting on the company's board of directors.

Guess that's not working out so well.

Gotcha! (Photo: In the Capital)

The FTC is said to be wondering whether it can actually pull off an antitrust case against Google, as consumers don't seem too bothered by the company's putting its own services before those of competitors. [Bloomberg]

Facebook is testing adding upcoming events and recently released albums--not sponsored posts, but not shared by friends, either--to the News Feed. [The Next Web]

A government advisory committee has filed objections to many of ICANN's new top-level domains, from .islam to .wtf to .navy. [ZDNet]

HP says it's lost almost $9 billion on the purchase of Autonomy because of shady accounting. But there are doubts about whether that really adds up. [Bloomberg]

Now whirring away in the computing museum at England's Bletchley Park: the world's oldest working computer, dating from 1951. [Extreme Tech]

Whitman. (Photo: Max Morse)

Hewlett-Packard took an $8.8 billion charge against fourth-quarter earnings after uncovering "serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations" at Autonomy, the British software maker H-P acquired last year, the company said today.

That's a large loss by any measure, and looks all the uglier given that former CEO Leo Apotheker paid $11.1 billion for the search engine developer just last August in an attempt to compete in the enterprise software market. Drill down on the corporate speak—and set aside H-P's claim that it remains "100 percent committed” to Autonomy's "industry-leading technology"—and it sounds like the company simply bought a bill of goods:

As a result of that investigation, HP now believes that Autonomy was substantially overvalued at the time of its acquisition due to the misstatement of Autonomy’s financial performance, including its revenue, core growth rate and gross margins, and the misrepresentation of its business mix.

This appears to have been a willful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company in order to mislead investors and potential buyers. These misrepresentations and lack of disclosure severely impacted HP management’s ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal.

News of the write-down overshadowed generally disappointing results, in which revenue, operating margins and earnings per share declined. "Fiscal 2012 was the first year in a multiyear journey to turn H-P around,” CEO Meg Whitman said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Ms. Whitman said during a conference call this morning that the company has shared its findings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office. "H-P intends to seek regress against various parties in the appropriate civil courts to recoup what we can for our shareholders," she said.

Note: A previous version of this post reported that H-P acquired Autonomy for $10 billion. Currency fluctuations and other factors raised the price to $11.1B when the deal closed in October 2011.

• Mr. Hurd first spotted Ms. Fisher on the reality dating series Age of Love, so things really began on the wrong foot.
• During the first job interview, which "felt more like date", discussion turned to the time Ms. Fisher posed for Playboy
• Name dropping: Mr. Hurd is flying to China to meet the Vice Premier. Can you come up to his room to see some documents?
• Mr. Hurd mentions that many women, including Sheryl Crow, are crazy about him.
• When this fails to impress, he tells Ms. Fisher about a massive acquisition HP is working on. Ms. Fisher's mother, briefed on the news, is surprised he is discussing sensitive business secrets.
• While staying together at a hotel, Mr. Hurd points out that he regularly sleeps with one woman in New York, another in San Francisco.
• Stopping by an ATM, Mr. Hurd points out the balance in his checking account is over a million dollars.

The whole thing is available as a PDF here.

Which high-profile founder apparently resigned from his popular start-up?

Which style book just jumped into the 21th century?

How many funds does a fundraiser raise if a fundraiser does raise funds?

Whose sexual harassment letter will soon be unsealed?

Is there anyone who hasn’t heard about the new domain name yet?