Forget the Rihanna/Chris Brown squabble, online personal management finance providers are getting all the press these days about a PR smack down. The latest round: Intuit vs. Mint.com. And the online world is loving it.

Intuit finds it hard to believe Mint.com’s growth rate is as successful as it says, and called Mint into question via a letter. TechCrunch reported the fight here.

TechCrunch isn’t the only site bringing this battle into the spotlight. A Mint.com user, Kevin Thompson, takes another shot at Intuit here. One of his points: “Quicken sucks.” BI.net, too, has given a shout out to the battle.

My oh my have the gloves come off, and everyone seems to be enjoying the show. This is a classic example of the old PR saw, “be careful what you publicize.” The fact is this is business, pure and simple. Intuit/Quicken is falling behind the online startups (perhaps by a large margin) and it is flailing at arguably the online leader in the space. Bad PR move/good sport for us market watchers.