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August 1, 2008

Google VC Fund and Managing Conflicts of Interest

Meant to weigh in on this sooner, but Google is going to launch a corporate VC fund. I've registered various times my general skittishness about such things, so I won't belabor that here, other than to say I can't imagine the world needs another Valley venture fund, corporate or otherwise.

The part that bugs me, however, is this: The guy running the fund was apparently a coworker of Sergey Brin's wife. You remember, the wife who runs the company in which Google already made an investment. Anyway, you would think the Google braintrust would try a little harder to look less conflicted in its investing decisions. Apparently, however, it's not enough that it invested in a company run by a founder's wife; Google had to go on and wrap a fund around one of her former colleagues.

Am I the only one who thinks Google doesn't do a great job skirting real/perceived conflicts of interest? I'm no nag on this subject, and have a dizzying number of conflicts myself, but I least try not to go out of my way to trip over them.

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