Google Becomes Part of Alphabet

Google Larry Page
Page: “This newer Google is a bit slimmed down”

Google is to create a new parent company called Alphabet, as part of a restructuring. Announcing the creation of Alphabet in a blog post, Google co-founder Larry Page said the move was designed to make the company “cleaner and more accountable”. Page becomes the CEO of Alphabet while his Google co-founder Sergey Brin will be its president. Sundar Pichai, who currently runs product and engineering for Google’s internet businesses, becomes the new CEO of Google.

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet.

In the blog post, Page describes Alphabet as: “mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead.” These far afield companies are ones focused on the healthcare sector, including Life Sciences and Calico. Google’s X lab incubation arm will also be part of Alphabet.

Page concludes by saying that the intention is not for Alphabet to be a big consumer brand with related products. The whole point, he says, is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands.