Google restructures, naming parent company Alphabet

Google chief executive officer Larry Page announced in a blog post Monday that he and co-founder Sergey Brin will head a new holding company called Alphabet, which will oversee the original Google company that includes its now-iconic search engine and its popular YouTube video service.

Alphabet will not be taking over any of Google’s internet-centric companies at all.

Yesterday, Google birthed Alphabet Inc. which became the umbrella organisation for a collection of companies. There’s every indication that this means Google+ will also continue to reside within Google, rather than be spun-out as a separate Alphabet company. In the past few years, Google has acquired Nest, which does smarthome gear; Boston Dynamics, which does robotics; developed self-driving cars; started working on health products and life extension; and it’s been exploring other areas that have little to do with the Internet.

Google announced that it is reorganizing under a new name – Alphabet – and separating its moneymaking businesses from the moonshot ones.

In other news, cloud advisory firm Cloud Sherpas has helped supermarket Waitrose implement Google Apps for Work into its business.

Page said they named it “Alphabet” to represent language, “one of humanity’s most important innovations”, and as a play on words of “Alpha-bet”, as in your best bet.

“Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related”, Page said. Dividing Google’s diverse portfolio will reportedly push leaders and spinoff companies to become more particular about what happens to their bottom lines.

A “strong” CEO will run each of the businesses with assistance from Page and Brin, Page said.

What else does Google’s Alphabet do?

To prove a trademark infringement, a trademark owner would have to show that the new Alphabet created a “likelihood of confusion” among consumers between the two brands. After leading efforts to build Chrome and related products, Pichai was given responsibility in 2013 for Google’s Android mobile operating system – a crucial role as the company was seeing much of its Internet business shift to mobile devices.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens at Google – it’s definitely a new chapter. Its search and advertising business is leading in the world, making more than $50 billion a year.