14 DAY TRIAL // It would blow everybody's mind and it would most likely be talked about for years to come if the deal were to go down. It would look like an incestuous relationship between the long-gone freedom of speech, ideal from the Eastern Block, and the openness that Google would bring to the table. Corruption dug in deep during the communist period that encompassed roughly 50 years of recent history and in it journalists were pushed around and threatened that they would loose everything that they held dear, in case they were to unveil acts and present evidence to back them up.
The Azeri publication "Trend-capital" cited sources close to the two Russian billionaires, who said that the two, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, had made an offer to buy Google for ten billion dollars in order to create the biggest media holding in Europe, dubbed "Transparency Media". The respective oligarch's press biros haven't denied it, but the main investors of Google, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield&Byers and Sequoia Capital companiesm refused to comment on this.
The two businessmen have created their empires based on the natural resources found in Russia, Abramovich dealing mostly with petrol and Deripaska being called the "Aluminum King" of that part of the world. This is not the first attempt of Abramovich to draw media attention and focus on himself; a couple of years ago, he bought Chelsea Footbal Club from London, a football squad that he invested massively in and managed to bring it from dwelling in the middle of the FA League ranks to being top dog and winning two titles in a row. While that might look like a success, I think that Google is a bit more than a simple football club and that the transaction going down would have much more serious implications.
All that remains now to be seen is whether the founders of the Mountain View based giant are willing to sell. My guess is "no".