Google has found its new chief information officer, CNET News.com has learned: Benjamin Fried, a programmer who rose through the ranks to run much of Morgan Stanley's computing infrastructure.
Google CIO Benjamin Fried
(Credit: Association for Computing Machinery)Fried, a managing director who led Morgan Stanley's Application Infrastructure group, will take the new post in May, Google spokesman Matt Furman confirmed Thursday.
According to an internal Morgan Stanley memo seen by News.com, Fried will leave Morgan Stanley at the end of the month "to pursue opportunities outside the firm."
The memo also indicated that Fried is no stranger to Google. While at Morgan Stanley, one of his projects was working on Google's initial public offering in 2004, the memo said.
Google's last CIO, Douglas Merrill, left earlier in April to become president of EMI's digital unit. Earlier this month, rumors surfaced that Fried would be Google's new CIO.
Running Google's computing infrastructure is a daunting challenge on which the company's success hinges. Google not only has thousands of servers housed in at least 36 data centers scattered around the globe, but also a build-it-yourself culture that means the company is responsible for maintaining much of its own technology.
Fried, who worked for Morgan Stanley computing operations for nearly 14 years, has experience in the area, though. According to the memo, he worked on Morgan Stanley's first Web site, its workstation software, and its intranet.
From the World Wide Web to high-end salami
Fried got in on the ground floor of the Web. According to his biography, while he was at Columbia University, he worked on the original World Wide Web software written by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
In his most recent work at Morgan Stanley, Fried ran a wide swath of essential technology operations that are part of the Application Infrastructure group. His purview included e-mail, grid computing, real-time market data, source code management for software projects, the Web site, instant messaging, and desktop software.
Before joining Morgan Stanley, he did some work for Heuristicrats Research that sounds right up Google's tech-savvy alley: he helped design what he calls the Decision-Theoretic Scheduler, technology to schedule jobs in a system that's got too much to do already. It's abstruse stuff, but it sounds like it would apply squarely to Google's computing challenges. NASA used it to schedule missions, he said.
Outside of his computing work, Fried's an Ultimate Frisbee fan with ailing knees and a partner in Fra' Mani Handcrafted Salumi, a Berkeley, Calif.-based maker of cured meats that was founded by chef Paul Bertolli.
Microsoft has tried the front-door approach in wooing Yahoo. But, pssst, the backdoor is unlocked.
The software maker, in its pursuit of Yahoo, has tried knocking on the Internet search pioneer's front door, then banging with its unsolicited bid, and now it's two weeks away from using a battering ram, should the deadline remain fast and firm to name an opposition slate to Yahoo's board.
But the backdoor has plenty of potential.
Yahoo's nonexecutive board chairman, Roy Bostock, and Microsoft director Charles Noski both serve on the board of investment bank Morgan Stanley. With Morgan Stanley's annual shareholder meeting coming up next month in New York, it seems to be as good a time as any for Bostock and Noski to be passing notes. (Just keep them away from the watchful eye of Morgan Stanley's chief executive, John Mack, whose firm is representing Microsoft in its Yahoo bid.)
And in America's heartland, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Yahoo President Sue Decker could break bread, or rather, dine on a juicy steak, while attending the shareholder meeting at Nebraska-based insurance and investment company Berkshire Hathaway, at which both serve as board directors.
There's plenty of time for Bill and Sue to hang out. The shareholder meeting, scheduled for the first weekend in May (PDF), is a multiday affair that gives investors the option of also sipping on cocktails at fine-jewelry store Borsheims, a Berkshire Hathaway holding, and dining at Gorat's Steakhouse.
Microsoft's big bid for Yahoo
And who knows, maybe Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway's chief executive and a close friend of Gates, may make the perfect go-between for the two companies. After all, Buffet's advice is closely followed by the financial press, investors of high net worth, and institutional investors.
Meanwhile, in Hannover, Germany, on Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a pitch for the existing offer.
"The deal makes sense, with the price and structure we announced. We hope it becomes reality," he told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.
Morgan Stanley is the banker representing Electronic Arts in its unsolicited buyout bid for rival game publisher Take-Two, the investment bank confirmed Monday.
While that news alone is no big deal, consider this: Morgan Stanley is also representing Microsoft in its unsolicited buyout offer for Yahoo, which was announced a mere 25 days ago.
That's two megabillion-dollar buyout bids the premier investment banking firm has agreed to handle in the past month. And both have the potential to get mean and nasty, should the target companies kick and scream all the way to the altar.
So, this raises the question regarding Morgan Stanley, lofty fees aside:
Is Morgan a glutton for punishment?
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