Google’s being acquired. Its new owner will be Alphabet, a palace coup pulled off by Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page is to become CEO of the new Alphabet, Brin his president and Sundar Pichai, formally senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google, takes over as Google CEO.
Page shared the news today both on the Google blog and on the new Alphabet site. He wrote:
Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet. I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.
What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.
Alphabet will be replacing Google as the traded entity, with all shares of Google converting to Alphabet stock. It will still be known as GOOG and GOOGL, however. The company has also filed a Form 8-K here with the US Securities & Exchange Commission, outlining its plans.
Page shared the news today both on the Google blog and on the new Alphabet site. He wrote:
Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet. I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.
What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.
Alphabet will be replacing Google as the traded entity, with all shares of Google converting to Alphabet stock. It will still be known as GOOG and GOOGL, however. The company has also filed a Form 8-K here with the US Securities & Exchange Commission, outlining its plans.
What’s Part Of Alphabet?
What makes up the alphabet of the new Alphabet? From the filing and blog post, Alphabet includes It’s unclear where many other things will go. Project Fi, Google’s virtual mobile network, for example. Will that stay part of Google or roll under Alphabet? That’s not been made clear.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that YouTube — which has its own CEO in the form of long-time Googler Susan Wojcicki — hasn’t been rolled out from under Google.
It might be that after the initial transition, this and other spin-outs could happen.
