Why Google should merge with Goldman Sachs
After each company receives a stinging rebuke from a departing employee, might a meeting of these two great corporate minds reap huge dividends?
The beating of breasts could surely be heard even by penguins on melting ice caps.
Perhaps the two most important names in contemporary business were, this week, being criticized by their employees for losing their ethos, for sacrificing their soul, for, dare one utter it, selling out.
When Google's James Whittaker and Goldman Sachs' Greg Smith penned their respective lack-of-respect farewells, strange shivers wafted about the world of business.
Had these people lost their minds? Were they both experiencing some form of cranial trauma brought on by excessive stress? Had their lovers recently left them for, well, impoverished sculptors?
Though many might have considered that these two were merely stating the obvious, for me their resignations were inspirational. For they gave me a spirited idea: Google should merge with Goldman Sachs. Consider just how efficacious and forward-thinking it would be if Larry Page and Lloyd Blankfein sat down in a dark alcove of some discreet restaurant and held hands.
Please consider the multi-faceted merits of such a union. Here are two men who enjoy winning. Each, though, has a tiny image problem. Yes, they both have a diminshed image. And, yes their companies have a tiny problem with their image.
If they got together and created Googleman Sachs, benefits would flow like wine on Christmas Eve in Provence.
Google would find it far more comfortable to perform its current money-munching maneuvers like Google+ and blame it on the Goldman Sachs wing.
Indeed, the new Googleman Sachs could actually have a Department of Evil that would exist merely to make the money, while all the other employees did fine creative things--such as invent beautifully engineered, self-driving financial algorithms--and equally self-driving Toyota Prius speedboats.
One of the benefits for the existing Goldman Sachs would be that it could finally divest itself not merely of the ghost of stenchy mortgages, but of an image that has seen it become the utter Genghis Khan of banks--something that does take a little doing.
By associating itself with the rather more cuddly image of Google, it might even take on a little of Google's idealism.
The new Googleman Sachs might even give its highly polished traders and, um, bankers 20 percent of each week to give back to the world--which may or may not include giving back money the world had given them in the first place.
Consider, too, that if the world's most potent Valley company and the world's most potent Wall Street manipulator got together, deals could be struck via the renamed Googleman+.
There would be no need for nasty power meetings and frenzied phone calls. If you weren't on Googleman+, you simply wouldn't have any chance of participating in the very hottest offerings.
If you didn't post there whom you had eaten for lunch and why you thought that "Top Gun" was one of the greatest movies of all time, then your chance at investing in, say, Facebook would be forever lost.
Indeed, wouldn't this be the most beautiful way for Google to finally show Facebook who wears the sexier T-shirts? For, while Facebook still dreams of being a money-making machine, Google would--thanks to its Goldman Sachs arm--now be part of the world's biggest.
Indeed, the new Googleman Sachs surely wouldn't have come a mere third in the race to lead Facebook's IPO.
The Google side of things would have helped the new company learn how to deal with Facebookers. Just imagine how charming it would be for Googlies to now help Facebookers try to reap the rewards that they have so richly happened upon.
True, the price would be, though, that Facebook would have to hand over the data it has amassed in such an innocently enterprising manner, but once the IPO is done, why worry?
We can be confident that putting Goldman Sachs' chillingly ruthless ways together with Google's cheery but increasingly rapacious disposition would create an entity that would not only benefit each of the participants but society as a whole.
The profits from any dubious financial instruments would go toward bettering the world.
Just think, the new Googleman Sachs would have the wherewithal to offer free, fast Wi-Fi to everyone in America. And when the company got involved in some of the world's shadier deals, it could create ever more creative doodles that celebrated them and expressed their more positive side.
For example, should Googleman Sachs make huge amounts of money by, say, bankrupting the Republic of Georgia, the Googleman Sachs doodlers could create a joyous animation of migrant peoples set to "Georgia On My Mind."
I would not be surprised if, even now, Larry and Lloyd are setting up a dinner date and realizing the true potential of this radical proposal.
Gentlemen, I wish to take the usual 20 percent for this inspired thinking. That's 20 percent from both of you, of course. I was inspired by the old Goldman Sachs to be on both sides of the deal.