Share

Google Created its Own Parent Company

Google’s health efforts like Life Sciences and Calico, a division investigating aging and other diseases, will have their own chief executives.

Advertisement

“We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes”, Page wrote in the post.

Page and Brin, who founded Google back in 1998, will hold the posts of Alphabet CEO and president respectively.

Each company under Alphabet will have its own CEO. 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. These include technology businesses like Nest (which Google bought in 2014) and Google Fiber (which provides home internet access in certain cities). That should give a clearer picture of how Google’s core Internet business is performing, separate from other ventures, said analyst Colin Gillis of the investment firm BGC Partners. That mega-company is called Alphabet, and it’s ready to become one of those shadowy, quiet corporations that appear up at the very top of those brand flowcharts anti-capitalists love passing around.

“With this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole”, explained Page. Whatever the motivation behind the new company is, good or evil, the first thing you think the founders of Google would have done was to Google “Alphabet”. Page said. “We also like that it means alpha- bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for!” The company’s stock has surged in recent weeks after a new chief financial officer announced other moves to rein in corporate spending. The goal isn’t to make Alphabet a consumer brand, Page said.

Advertisement

Mr. Pichai will oversee management, engineering and research for Google’s products and platforms, according to Google’s filing at the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Alphabet is now the parent company of all of those smaller companies, one of which is Google. “Allowing new companies to rise under the conglomerate will allow for more leadership across the board and more focus on development”, says Jeff Ragovin, Founder at Ragovin Ventures and Co-founder of Buddy Media, acquired by Salesforce in 2012. Despite the reorganization, Google will continue to develop new products within the subsidiary, such as the recently launched Google Photos and Google Now.

Google morphs into 'Alphabet' in major shake-up