Google's wild and crazy buyout team

Posted Apr 12th 2007 5:55PM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: Deals, Rumors, Management, Google (GOOG)

When M&A pros talk about doing deals, they mention things like "accretive," "extending the product line," and "leveraging the customer base."

I'm not sure if they mention that a deal is "crazy" (but some deals certainly appear to be downright loony).

But, apparently, the M&A team at Google likes deals that are "really crazy." This is according to a report in Bloomberg.com.

If that's the case, it should make a lot of companies happy. I know quite a few that are based on crazy concepts and business models that are whacked. So, if I see such a deal, I'll definitely forwarding it to Google. Perhaps they will be even crazy enough to pay me a finder's fee, huh?

To be fair, Google tends to focus on small deals. In a sense, it's more like hiring a group of programmers, not taking on an infrastructure.

But to confuse things even more, Google says its looks for deals that can be monetized and can meet the rigorous analysis from computer algorithms.

Basically, I'm speechless.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Tags: Acquisitions, venture capital, VentureCapital