Google is Dead. Long Live Alphabet!

In a surprise move, Google co-founcers Larry Page and Sergey Brin, announced a radical shake-up of the company’s corporate structure and management. A new company named Alphabet will preside over a collection of companies, the largest of which will be Google. Even the site’s new address eschewed convention: https://abc.xyz/. The bulk of their business, search and the like, will be handled by the new Google CE0 Sundar Pichai.

“As Sergey [Brin, co-founder] and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, ‘Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one’,” wrote Page. Google has come under pressure as its founders have used the enormous success of its search engine to fuel riskier bets on autonomous cars, smart household devices, internet-delivering balloons and cutting-edge medical research. The major restructuring will ostensibly give investors greater insight into how the money is being spent.

All shares of Google will automatically convert into corresponding shares of Alphabet, which will continue to trade under the stock ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL. Shares in Google soared 5% in after hours trading. The new structure is said to be similar to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which wholly owns a number of diverse holdings and has stakes in several others. Page will become Alphabet’s CEO. Brin will be its president, and Eric Schmidt will be the executive chairman of Alphabet.

Credits:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/10/google-alphabet-parent-company