Google creates Alphabet: What you need to know about GOOG’s restructuring

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google 18 years ago as students at Stanford University, will become chief executive and president of Alphabet respectively, while Sundar Pichai will head up Google.

Vehicle leasing company Alphabet is investigating whether Google has infringed its trademark after the tech giant gave its new parent company the same name.

The aim of the operating overhaul is to allow Google to focus on developing its own products, while enabling other Alphabet subsidiaries with the independence to further their own brands.

The company’s X lab, responsible for developing initiatives such as drone delivery business Project Wing, will now operate under Alphabet, as will its Life Sciences division, which is developing a glucose-sensing contact lens. Google announced Monday (Aug. 10) it will be creating a new holding company called Alphabet Inc.

The new company named Alphabet is a collection of companies, the largest of which is Google, and will oversee all of the smaller companies as they continue to grow. The Alphabet name was chosen “because it means a collection of letters that represent language… the core of how we index with Google search“.

In his post, Page explained that restructuring the company would provide better management scale by running unrelated projects independently. But Google may be about to experience its most drastic change to date. Longtime Google executive Sundar Pichai, who has taken on increasingly important roles at the company in recent years, will be CEO of the core Google business.

Instead of spending their days on the necessary, but now tiresome, stuff of making sure Google stays number one in search, Internet advertising, and mobile operating systems, they’re trying to create technologies beyond our current grasp. Android, YouTube, search and ads will remain part of Google Inc.

Google is likely to steer clear of legal challenges because Alphabet won’t actually make products or work as a brand in its own right. However, those shares will still trade as GOOGL and GOOG on NASDAQ.

On Monday US-time, Google shocked the world in announcing it was Google no more and would henceforth be known as Alphabet.

The company has been a leading force in the markets and in a short time, it has now been brushing shoulders with the likes of Microsoft and Apple, other established names in the industry.

On the reverse, there had been concerns that the dominance of Google in its sector had reached its peak.