Google confirmed Morgan Stanley's director as its new chief information officer (CIO).

Benjamin Fried, who is currently working as a Morgan Stanley's technology department director will take up his new post in Google starting May.

We're pleases that Ben will be joining us as our new CIO and we look forward to him starting in May, said Google spokesman.

Fried will be replacing Douglas Merrill who left Google at the beginning of this month to run EMI's digital music business.

Fried joined Morgan Stanley in 1994 and his application infrastructure group in the firm is responsible for software development, e-commerce and knowledge worker productivity.

Google has over 36 data centers around the world and has also has a principle of maintaining its own technology which will be a challenge for Fried to take up in his position.

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