Google alphabetises

Google has gone against the flow again with a surprise restructure that places the company under a holding company called Alphabet. "From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have," said Larry Page, Google's CEO, in a blog post.

"We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant."

Page will run Alphabet (http://abc.xyz) with Google's co-founder Sergey Brin as President, explaining that Alphabet will oversee not only Google but other ventures which may have little to do with search technology, such as Life Sciences, based around a glucose-sensing contact lens, and Calico which is focused on longevity. Alphabet will also include X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, the former Google's drone delivery effort. Alphabet will also include investment arms Ventures and Capital.

"Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence," said Page. 

According to Page, each business under the Alphabet umbrella will have its own CEO, with Alphabet senior management to oversee the business as a whole. Google financials will also be provided separately from those for the rest of the Alphabet businesses, Page said.

Sundar Pichai, previously Product Chief at Google, will be taking over as CEO of Google. "I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations," Page said. "Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation -- continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organise the world's information." 

Financially, Alphabet Inc. replaces Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. 

"The whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands," Page said, listing the following benefits:

Getting more ambitious things done.
Taking the long-term view.
Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish.
Investing at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see.
Improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.
Making Google even better through greater focus. 

Interested?

Read the original blog post