US: The $345-billion tech giant Google has just undergone a seismic change. On a sleepy Monday, Google dropped a bomb in the technology world by announcing that it is restructuring into a new company called Alphabet. It took a while for tech watchers to pick their jaws off the floor, and understand that the move basically reduces the search engine to just an operating unit of a much larger entity. Google’s co-founder and current CEO made the announcement in a blog post. He said that the creation of Alphabet will allow him and co-founder Sergey Brin to do more on management scale, because now they would be able to run things independently that aren’t very related. Page will now be running Alphabet as its CEO, and Brin will become the new company’s president.
The slimmed-down Google has also gotten a new CEO — India-born Sundar Pichai. Pichai has long served as senior vice president for products and Page’s right-hand man. Besides Search, the businesses which would continue to be a part of Google include Maps, YouTube, Android, Apps and Advertising. Apart from Google, the companies which will come directly under Alphabet’s umbrella include life-sciences company Calico, thermostat company Nest, high-speed broadband Internet service called Fiber, research department Google X, as well as Google’s venture and capital units. 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 of the same rights.
Source: Times of India & The Guardian
