Google IPO won't be by auction?

After all the hoopla a couple of months ago about Google going the unique route of not using investment bankers for their IPO, it now looks like they are. As a matter of fact, it looks like the IPO is going to be handled by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group. You don't get much stodgier than that.

Too bad. The idea of ditching the usual channels and saving a bundle in fees by taking the Bloogle (Blogger+Google) stock offering directly to the public had an awful lot of appeal. One of the original ideas was to take the public offering online in an eBay sort of framework. Now, all the investment banks are scrambling for a piece of what looks to be around a $6 billion public offering of about one-half the company's stock. As the ElectricNews release said:

The firm's most recent high profile acquisition was that of Blogger, the popular Weblogging software company, which gave the company a toehold in the burgeoning world of self-publishing.