IT strategy - Enter the voice of reason.

(From Financial Director)

Byline: Tom Berry, deputy editor of Financial Director.

While the rest of the corporate world went Google-loopy after the search engine announced its upcoming flotation, it was Warren Buffett, chairman of investment company Berkshire Hathaway and one of the harshest critics of overvalued tech stocks, who brought sanity to the situation.

At his annual address to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in May, Buffett praised Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have admitted publicly to being influenced by Buffett's management and investment style, but he did not go as far as recommending Google stock as a good buy. "In an IPO, the sellers decide when to come to market, so it's way less likely that it's going to come at a time that suits you," Buffett said.

And he is right. Google's founders are not putting $2.7bn of shares up for sale out of the goodness of their hearts. The Securities Act of 1934 states that private companies must report their financials within a certain period after acquiring 500 shareholders. Google was on the verge of having to report as a public company without any of the benefits of juicy capital raised from a listing. Additional pressure from venture capitalist shareholders tipped Google over the edge and into the share markets.

But Google - which includes "Don't be evil" among its many California-flavoured mission statements - has decided to bypass Wall Street underwriters and sell its shares by online auction. Where underwriters would traditionally reserve large blocks of shares at suppressed prices for favoured clients, Google's 'Dutch' auction means that all interested parties have to submit bids for available shares at a price they are willing to pay. The IPO managers will then decide the lowest fixed price at which all the outstanding shares can be sold.

This novel approach to listing has won many plaudits, none more important than from Buffett himself. Press and Wall Street commentators have branded Google's IPO as the most hotly anticipated since Netscape's in 1995. But will Google kick-start the new economy all over again or will it, and its shareholders, plunge lemming-like as a raft of hi-tech IPOs did in the late 1990s?