Vehicle leasing company Alphabet is investigating whether Google has infringed its trademark after the tech giant gave its new parent company the same name.
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Under the plan announced Monday, Alphabet will be comprised of the core Google business – including Internet search, mapping and YouTube – along with newer businesses that will be managed separately, such as Google Fiber, Nest and the investment arm Google Ventures.
Alphabet is the beginning of a new chapter for Google’s cofounders, as they step up and name Sundar Pinchai as CEO of Google, now a fully owned subsidiary of Alphabet.
“Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related”, Larry Page, now CEO of Alphabet, said in a media statement.
Jan Dawson at Jackdaw Research said that with the transformation, “it will finally become clear quite how large and unprofitable all the non-core initiatives at Google are, which might well increase pressure from shareholders to exit some of those businesses”. Google China moved its servers from mainland China to Hong Kong in 2010 when the company refused to comply with search censorship.
He is the second person of Indian origin to head a major IT company after Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella who became CEO of software giant Microsoft in February 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer.
On Monday US-time, Google shocked the world in announcing it was Google no more and would henceforth be known as Alphabet.
“For Sergey and me, this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google – the birth of Alphabet”. These ventures don’t necessarily tie into Google’s successful search and advertising products. Page is to become CEO of Alphabet.
“While there are many details to be worked out, this could lead to a much nimbler and aggressive Google that can take on additional risks to compete with upstarts and existing Internet platform companies”, Mizuho Securities analysts wrote in a client note, raising their rating to “buy” from ” neutral”. As Alphabet Inc. now replaces Google Inc.as the public entity on the Wall Street, hence all shares of Google will automatically be converted into shares of parent company Alphabet. The company’s two classes of shares will, however continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.
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Page said he and Brin chose the name Alphabet “because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations”. Ventures and Capital, Google’s investment division, will function as a separate subsidiary as well.
