21st Century Wire asks…
What’s Google up to now?
Hiding new operations behind another new corporate facade? More world domination beckons.
No surprise then, that company shares jumped more than 5 percent after the news, up to $665.99 per share…
Google chief executive Larry Page on Monday announced that the tech giant is undergoing a major restructuring and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of a new conglomerate known as Alphabet.
The move, Page said, will allow Google to focus more on its core products, namely its search engine, while Alphabet manages a variety of different businesses from driverless cars to drones.
“What is Alphabet?” Page wrote. “Alphabet is 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.”
Other companies within Alphabet will include “Calico” and “Life Sciences,” the parts of Google that focus on making health products. Page said that the company’s X lab, which focuses on moonshot projects such as Google’s drone delivery service will also be part of Alphabet, as will its investment arms, Ventures and Capital.
Page will be chief executive of Alphabet while his Google co-founder Sergey Brin will become president. Sundar Pichai, who is currently Google’s senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps, will become Google’s chief executive.
Page said that, “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.” The company’s two classes of shares will continue to trade on the Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG, Page said.
Google’s stock, which is up nearly 25 percent so far this year, climbed another 5 percent in after-hours market trading.
So what stays a part of the core Google business? According the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the main Google business will include “search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android” as well as the technical infrastructure for those departments.
Most of the top Google executives will become Alphabet executives, the filing said. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, chief financial officer Ruth Porat, and chief legal officer David Drummond will all take up corresponding positions within Alphabet. Porat will also remain the CFO of Google…
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