Is Google’s Alphabet a nod to Buffett?

Google announced the creation of a new company called Alphabet, with Google founders Larry Page serving as CEO and Sergey Brin as president.

BMW said on Tuesday it was looking into whether Google infringed any trademark rights after the technology giant set up a new parent company called Alphabet, which is also the name of a BMW subsidiary. In a blog post announcing the change, Page said that Google is “operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable”.

The new structure reflects the way many old economy corporations work, with a central unit acting as an umbrella to relatively independent business units focused on specific areas.

Under the new setup, Google will have Sundar Pichai, who is the Senior Vice President of Product, as its new CEO.

In any event, it’s oddly comforting to know Google/Alphabet has the same problem many do when they’re trying to purchase a domain for their own website.

Alphabet will be the parent company presiding over distinct entities, of which Google is to be the largest initially. This includes Google X, which makes things like the self-driving vehicle and is working on a drone delivery service.

It will still use the Google name for its popular Internet search engine, mapping service and related products. Both Page and Brin will be exclusively responsible for determining the compensation of the CEOs in each spin-off company and they’ve introduced segment reporting for Google’s Q4 results, where the internet company’s financials will be provided separately from the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole. Each of these businesses will have its own CEO and business strategy.

The new structure will allow management to “scale”, since the company can independently run “things that aren’t very related”. Further, Ventures and Capital, Google Inc.’s investment arms, are planned for growth. Google have a long history of buying tech start-up companies, not all of which necessarily are complemented by being associated with Google. In fact, in some ways, it will not even be “Google” at all – from now on, that name will refer only to the company’s search business.

Page did not mention Google Glass, specifically, but it has gained purchase in healthcare and, in fact, a study published this week found that it could save lives in the emergency departments of hospitals.