G is for Google - Tech Giant Becomes 'Alphabet'

News rarely gets bigger than this - Google, at least as we know it, is no more!

Unbelievable, I know, but it's true! Don't panic however, the world's favoured search engine will carry on, but the entire company is going through a major overhaul. No longer will hordes of, lets be honest, largely unrelated companies be confined to the Google banner.

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Google CEO Larry Page (now Alphabet CEO) announced yesterday the formation of a new company, dubbed 'Alphabet', to serve as an umbrella to all the varied business endeavours the company currently, and plan to, pursue. I must say it makes a lot of sense, as some of the more recent branches the company have chosen to take don't really fit with the established brand. Arms such as their Life Sciences division are so far removed from search engines, email and web browsers that it almost seemed wrong to slap the Google name on it. They now seem to have recognised this fact, as made clear in Page's recent post:

"We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.

Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet."

From here on in, the various elements that once served to make up the vast mega-corporation of Google will now be properly partitioned, each capable of running properly under the supervision of its own CEO. Sundar Pichai, formerly Senior Vice-President of Products, has been chosen to head up Google as its new CEO after routinely impressing Larry Page and his business partner / co-founder Sergey Brin (who will now take on the role of President of Alphabet), since October last year.

"This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google." writes Page, "A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google."

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So it seems that Google will be in good hands, and should continue to function to at least the same standard as before, if not better now that it's not chained quite so rigorously to so many arms with very different goals. The bigger question is what will make up the rest of the Alphabet?

Services such as Android, Advertising, Maps, Search and YouTube are to remain as a part of Google, while others will be siphoned off. Some of the branches that will become a subsidiary company in their own right include; Calico, Nest, Fiber, Ventures & Capital and X-Lab. We're sure more and more will be added to that list as time progresses, as Google aim to assign subsidiaries to each and every letter. With the addition of the Pinterest add-on being incorporated into Chrome, which Pinterest themselves recommend that you use, we here at Social Songbird are expecting Google, or rather, their newly formed parent Alphabet, to make an effort to secure the blossoming platform for themselves. Whether or not that will be successful we can't say, but Pinterest would certainly make a nice addition to the new Alphabet family.

For those interested in the stock market, Page confirmed that Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the public-traded entity, however their 2 classes of shares will continue on as GOOGL and GOOG on Nasdaq. Google must be pretty happy as far as the stock market is concerned, as the value of both classes of shares quickly jumped by 4.5% upon the announcement of Alphabet.

To view the full press release from Larry Page, visit Alphabet's new home page: abc.xyz

Sam Bonson

Sam is an aspiring novelist with a passion for fantasy and crime thrillers. Currently working as Editor of Social Songbird, he hopes to one day drop that 'aspiring' prefix. Follow him @SamAtSMF

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