A lot of people may have been involved in Microsoft’s $42.1 billion offer to buy out Yahoo, one of the world’s premiere search engines and leading Internet companies.
Their involvement may not be directly superficial but are actually intertwined at certain points, and their bunch is much like that of a karass, a term coined by Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Cat’s Cradle.
The term karass refers to a group of people arranged to work together in accordance to a heavenly design without knowing what their destiny is. Indeed, the people that are bound in the Microsoft-planned takeover of Yahoo are acting as if they are indeed a karass, sans Bill Gates.
The network starts with Blackstone Group’s Jill Greenthal, who functions as an adviser for Microsoft. Greenthal currently stopped any forms of communications with her old Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette colleague, Yahoo’s Susan Decker. Decker happens to share a spot on the board of Berkshire Hathaway with Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Berkshire Hathaway’s head honcho Warren Buffett is clearly associated with Google and functions like some kind of a spiritual leader for Google founders Larry Page and Sergio Brin. Google happens to be the rival of Yahoo, which Microsoft plans to take over.
Google and Yahoo have been competing to acquire Trader Classified Media, which is based in Amsterdam and owns more than 550 print titles that include profitable ones such as Canada’s Auto Trader magazine as well as Buy & Sell Chinese in the US. On the other hand, Morgan Stanley banker Charles Cory is now an adviser for Microsoft.
Prior to Bill Gate’s venture, Cory also served as an adviser to Hewlett-Packard (HP), which is a high-profile business ally of Microsoft.
To continue with the karass network, HP’s current CEO Mark Hurd now sits as one of the board members of News Corp., which is planning to stage off Microsoft’s plan to get Yahoo. The media giant is willing to exchange its ownership of MySpace and several other online properties for a stake of 20% or more in Yahoo.
Yahoo co-founder David Filo, in his Facebook profile, said that he is friends with former AOL executive Steve Case, who served on the opposite side of the table from Morgan Stanley’s Paul Taubman on the merger of AOL and Time Warner. Tubman now serves as one of the bankers on Microsoft’s list of advisers.
Finance and investment giant Goldman Sachs is also in the Microsoft-Yahoo karass network. The banking firm was on Microsoft’s side last year, mapping out the viable strategies for the IT company on how to cut a deal with Yahoo. Now, Goldman Sachs is the one walking Yahoo through on how to approach the Microsoft bid.
Microsoft’s $42.1 billion quest to take Yahoo has gone through a lot of fascinating twists and turns and revealed a lot of interesting trivia and facts. Some might be tempted to call the profuse interconnections an “IT karass” but the term would certainly be fitting what with the numerous networks of individuals and organizations involved.