VentureBeat

Hope you had a delicious Thanksgiving. Here’s proof the news machine never stops:

Yahoo’s European head says arrivederce – Toby Coppel, in charge of Yahoo’s Western European market, is out, according to All Things D.

But Icahn is buying — Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is circling the bleeding hulk that is Yahoo like a shark, having just bought up about $67 million more in company shares. He now holds about 5.5 percent of Yahoo.

E-commerce shrinks — Online sales need a healthy dose of Viagra. E-commerce is down 4 percent from last year, according to comScore.

Navitas Capital getting its start in cleantech — New venture fund Navitas Capital is working on raising a first fund of up to $50 million for investing specifically in the green building industry.

Wind developer sues private equity firm — Some consider cleantech a lofty, virtuous business, existing above most worldly concerns. Not so, says UK-based wind developer Renewable Energy Systems, which has just hit Hudson Clean Energy Partners with a lawsuit alleging trade secret misappropriation and breach of fiduciary duty, according to peHUB.

Yet solar power is next to godliness — The Vatican now has solar panels on its roof. Does that mean solar power is closer to God than the Pope?

LEDs and compact fluorescents to rule — One of the latest projects to increase the efficiency of the incandescent light bulb has been abandoned, clearing the way for newer alternatives.

Army paying $50M for war games — The U.S. Army has set aside a fund for five years of game development to help train (and amuse) its troops.

Tivo economics look good — Freakonomics gives a breakdown of the time-economics of the Tivo, leading the author to wonder why such devices aren’t used more widely.

SEC gives reasons for shuttering Prosper — The SEC has decided that peer-to-peer lender Prosper is really a seller of securities, and must be regulated as such (and closed in the meantime).

In another sign of the torrid growth of solar services — the industry that moves solar cells from manufacturers to their new homes on rooftops and in utility installations — Recurrent Energy has secured $75 million from a private equity firm to expand its business.

Recurrent is the firm behind projects like San Francisco’s planned 5-megawatt municipal installation, which will be installed and owned by the company, with the city buying electricity at a set rate. The large financing reflects the large projects Recurrent wants to take on; the company leaves household installations to firms like Solarcity and SunRun.

There’s plenty of evidence that the commercial and government markets Recurrent wants to serve are taking as strong an interest as homeowners are in solar. From Google to Wal-Mart, large corporations have shown an interest in blanketing their rooftops with solar panels. Big institutions like airports and universities have also seen the benefit in using solar to help alleviate peak daytime energy prices.

That leaves plenty of room for Recurrent and its competitors to expand. One of its main competitors, SunEdison, recently took on $161 million to build up its own business, which includes building big solar farms for utilities.

The backer in this funding was Hudson Clean Energy Partners, which noted that it could be “just the beginning of an even larger financing relationship.” Recurrent is based in San Francisco, Calif.