In a company restructuring endeavor, Google is no longer top dog in the corporate hierarchy. Instead, it will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet.
Now I need to purge my mind of Sesame Street…
In a move that appears to be completely out of the blue, the lovable and colorful garage-based search engine turned international technology giant has become the latest ‘victim’ of corporate restructuring. In an effort to improve accountability between projects, a new parent company has been set up to oversee the incredibly diverse monolith that is Google.
Larry Page moves away to become the CEO of Alphabet, along with co-founder Sergey Brin. All shares in Google will be transferred over to Alphabet, becoming the new trading name for the company. Google’s new CEO is now Sundar Pichai, who was formally the head of Android.
For the most part, things will stay largely as they are. Android, YouTube, G+, Photos, and even Chrome, will all continue as brands under Google. A number of R&D projects will be moved, becoming subsidiary of Alphabet. Tucked away in a government securities and exchange document, a number of other new subsidiaries will be created under Alphabet, including Calico, Nest, and Fiber; Investment arms Google Ventures, Google Capital, and Google X will also be moved.
There is currently no danger of Gmail becoming Alphamail, or Google Search becoming Alphabet Soup, but there are likely to be many jokes over the coming years. Whether the original slogan of ‘do no evil’ will remain, is another matter.