It is said that some “slimming down” will occur in the firm after its addition to the parent company.
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Other than the name of the new parent, and news of Pichai’s appointment as Google CEO, Page did not provide many details on any additional changes that would result from the reorganization. A lot of the disparate projects Google is now doing will be spun off into other companies with their own CEOs.
According to several comments from the company’s employees on a Quora thread, people working at Google found out about Alphabet at about the same time as the rest of the world. Sundar Pichai is the new CEO of Google, after serving as Google’s senior vice president of products and helming Google IO 2015.
Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman at Google, will transition to Alphabet with the same title, Google said.
To further explain the company’s choice, one of Google’s founders, Larry Page, wrote in his memo: “As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, ‘Google is not a conventional company”.
All Google shares and rights will be converted to Alphabet but will remain as GOOGL and GOOG on Nasdaq.
Page said in a blog post the move was done even if Google was operating well because “we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable”.
Alphabet will include a group of companies, the largest of which will be Google.
“We are not planning to sell the domain”, said Micaela Sandstede, a BMW spokesperson in Munich who described the website as a “very active” part of Alphabet’s business. Here’s more on what the overhaul means for Google. Since every company under Alphabet will have its own CEO, Page and Brin’s job will be to ensure they get the help they need to go from strength to strength. Page mentions the Life Sciences division, which is responsible for that smart contact lens concept among other things; Calico, which “aim[s] to devise interventions that slow aging and counteract age-related diseases”; and the experimental X lab as subsidiaries that are now under the Alphabet banner rather than Google’s. The Ventures and Capital arm will also come under Alphabet’s direct control.
Analyst Rick Summer at Morningstar says this increased outside scrutiny may have implications for how freely Brin and Page can continue backing ventures they believe in or are devoted to in the face of financial losses or market skepticism.
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On March 13, 2013, Pichai added Android to the Google products he oversees.
