Business Insider:
Google just announced a brand new operating structure.
It is now a subsidiary of a company called Alphabet, which has Larry Page as CEO. The CEO of Google is Sundar Pichai.
“Alphabet Inc. will replace 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.”
This is blockbuster news breaking as we speak.
This is “holy $#!%” territory for Google, folks.
Meaning?
Omegeddon
In the end, this just seems to add extra layers and makes the majority of what was Google (but not all of it) now just called Google and run under Pichai. It already did, but perhaps this will mean less daily influence from Brin & Page.
Basically, it’s a reorganization mostly without impact, though “less daily influence” is where this will make a difference. We just need to start calling Google as a whole Alphabet if we want to cover everything and be technically correct.
Maybe someone knows the source of this, but it’s been floating around my office for years: “In computers we rarely create new things. We just rename and re-discover old things.”
Is this overhaul effective immediately or will it only take effect next year after the OEMs and carriers approve it?
Have you read the story?
So they created a holding company….like lots of publicly traded companies do. I don’t see why everyone is wetting their pants over this.
I see what you did there!
On the one hand, this is practically non-news because Google was already moving in this direction and the name is all about semantics. This would be more impressive if they said, YouTube, Android and Chrome are all separate apart from Search, Gmail, Maps, +, Photos and Music. But they didn’t.
All this means is that they’re going to try and push the Nest brand pretty heavily and they don’t want the negative press that Google’s ad business gets to impact Nest … even though it should because you know they’re going to be mining that data heavily.
Google also doesn’t want to separate Android from it’s primary brand.
It’s also a smarter move because when they finally come out with cars they won’t want the total mess of bugs, security holes and weird UI choices they’ve made with Android to influence buyers of their cars or car software. Realistically I imagine they’ll try the same route as Android and by that I mean license to all the big auto makers and allow them to just plop a UI on top of their software. And frankly that’s not terrible as who knows if Apple’s self driving software will get out there and be just as good as Google’s. (Has Apple been working on their’s as long? Nobody knows) and so worst case Apple could just slap their own UI on top of Google’s self driving software.
But either way when they finally get into cars, nobody is going to want to drive a red, blue, green and yellow car.
Taking a high-level view of all of this, why (other than their public statements) would you do this? The reason, AFAIC, is because their many other profitless ventures are draining resources from their only profitable company, Google. At some point, Google could become a money loser also.
WTF, Alphabet? Well I suppose it comes before Apple in a sorted list.
So how old are the founders of Google, now? Because putting on some extravagant outfit and telling everyone that you’re now going by your ‘stripper name’ may be a sign of dementia.