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Google Is Restructuring Under a New Company Called Alphabet
Mark Wilson writes: Sundar Pichai is the new CEO of Google as the company undergoes a huge restructuring. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are moving to a new company called Google Alphabet which will serve as an umbrella company for Google and its various projects. Google itself is being, in Page's words, "slimmed down" and the change is quite an extraordinary one. Page quotes the original founders' letter that was written 11 years go. It states that "Google is not a conventional company", and today's announcement makes that perfectly clear. There's a lot to take in...Google Alphabet is, essentially, the new face of Google. Page chose to make the announcement in a blog post that went live after the stock markets closed. This is more than just a rebranding, it is a complete shakeup, the scale of which is almost unprecedented.
Alphabulous News!
may have been getting a little impatient with the many directions that Google was going in.
This allows Google to focus on making money from advertisements, while Alphabet can makes bets on many different products
At least that is my take on it
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Any idea how this will translate into yet another tax dodge for Google?
A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO of a large high tech corporation. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. "Open these if you run up against a problem you don't think you can solve," he said.
Well, things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn and he was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wit's end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, "Blame your predecessor."
The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press -- and Wall Street - responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.
About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, "Reorganize." This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.
After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope.
The message said, "Prepare three envelopes."
And I thought they were backpedaling on the Google+ integration, before...
Not the beginning of April?
With all their business being conducted in Bermuda it is difficult to get enough tax write offs on what little taxes they do pay... so they are fixing the glitch.
This has got to be a joke somehow, right? I find this shocking.
I thought we already endured April fools.
Makes a change from everything they do being just Beta.
Alphabet as in alphabet soup agencies.
We are shoving all the NSA/FBI Agents into a new company so they'll don't even have to act like a normal staff anymore.
No more bitching about legal protocols when the entire office is run by NSA/FBI agents.
Google employees should be in fear of losing their jobs. Corporate speak .....
... it is not April again...
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Google's shit never quite makes it through beta.
First, the new parent company is just called "Alphabet" - not "Google Alphabet", as the summary claims.
Second, on the face of it this seems more like a rebranding than anything else. Nothing seems to be changing; they're just renaming "Google" to "Alphabet", and then repurposing the Google name to be used for one already-existing division within the renamed company. It doesn't sound like anything functional is really changing, which belies the idea this is a "massive reorganization".
#DeleteChrome
The summary neglected to mention that the URL for Alphabet will be (and I'm not kidding) http://abc.xyz.
(Personally, I associate the .xyz domain with email spammers, but who am I to question their judgement?)
This is long overdue.
Google should have been run as a conglomerate years ago. You can't have one company that large and remain flexible and innovative
CAPTCHA: bridges
^^ burn them down!
Google is not a conventional company. It'll rob you in ways you've never imagine before, and will continue to rob you as it morph itself in ways you cannot even begin to imagine.
Sounds like someone realized Google has something like twenty or thirty ventures going right now and needed a better way to represent it on a balance sheet.
- So, there's this new Alphabet project-
- You mean Google project?
- Yeah. So anyway, this new project...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Ed Snowden's revelations, and the continuing antitrust actions against Google, have created the ripe conditions for a name change and image overhaul.
Think about Blackwater and its name changing over Chelsea Manning's black eye.
There are no absolutes.
Maybe this change has just a simple purpose in enabling Google to avoid paying taxes . . . ? I mean, in which country will the "Google Letters, A-Z" be incorporated? Ireland? The Cayman Islands . . . ? Will one Google Alphabet subsidiary own other subsidiaries . . . ?
Google could an opaque corporate structure, that would be undecipherable to tax authorities in different countries.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"Alphabet" not "Google Alphabet"
Google has been slowly changing from a dotcom tech company to a multinational conglomerate for a few years now. This is just them acknowledging that fact and structuring the company accordingly. This is similar to how United Aircraft became United Technologies in the 70s.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Alphabet means three-letter agencies to me..
Google is a virtual company anyway with only one profitable line of business (monetizing your personal information).
The letter from Page could not be more clear. The new company name is Alphabet. Google is a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company along with YouTube, and other companies that will be created with their own CEOs.
GOOGL and GOOG stocks will continue to trade under those symbols, although the shares will actually be in the new Alphabet.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
...I am the example.
I actually bought this for a few minutes. Despite the URL, despite how ridiculous it is on its face.
I think this is a social test for how phishing happens. People, including me, will apparently belive anything.
I am kinda pissed I got caught up in using brain cells on this.
Facebook owns the four most-downloaded mobile apps in 2014: Messenger, Facebook, whatsApp, and Instagram. Google needs more brand and production line. G+ has been proven to be a failure to integrate everything under google. Users just don't like that.
soon they will have middle out compression
Schools will no longer be permitted to teach "The Alphabet" as this will be in breach of Googles/Alphabets trademarks.
Just waiting for the first DCMA because someone used Alphabet without express permission.
Apparently, someone already owns the rights to "Evil Corp".
You are welcome on my lawn.
...but not necessarily its new sister companies.
Actually it would not surprise me if this were being done for legal protection. Google has diversified in so many different areas since its original creation, and many of these different areas have had their fair share of legal difficulties. Presently any legal attack on one of these areas is an attack on Google as a whole. By splitting the company into a bunch of separate legal entities, albeit under the same corporate umbrella, legal risk to the whole is mitigated.
For instance, Google/Alphabet can roll their European presence into Google.eu and be fully compliant with European data retention, right to be forgotten laws and tax laws, while Google.com could be solely US based and outside of EU jurisdiction.
Also, this is really not new. Corporates have been playing this shell game for years, hiding various aspects in companies who's only phyical esixtance is a single shared mailbox in some non-descript office building (many of them in places like Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Ireland). The difference here is Google/Alphabet are being open about splitting their company.
Alphabet comes before Apple in a list sorted alphabetically.
Standard scheme: Google will be devalued by milking it dry, and then dumped to a private equity firm. Just like Borland, for example.
Alphabet, do more evil
This is pretty much it.The Founders want to work on true Information Age stuff, but being all under one flag was just drawing too much heat from the political waves this kind of change causes.
Good-bye
in order to sue the shit out of everybody who uses letters from the alphabet in their name
How is Google's offshore money being allocated among the Alphabet members? If the EU gets a judgment against Google, then perhaps they won't be able to collect as must they could have yesterday.
I think the shark was just jumped.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It probably refers to Alphabet soup, however, that may show their management targets are as low as eating a child's lunch.
I love how, in the blog post, Larry specifically mentions four things that "seemed crazy at the time" that purportedly began at Google. Unfortunately two of them - YouTube and Google Maps - were actually created by others and eventually purchased by Google.
I can't wait for his future declarations regarding how people thought Google was crazy when they first created Waze!
#DeleteChrome
Amazon, the company whose logo reinforces that they sell everything from "A to Z."
Clever new corporate name, Google.
I foresee a wave of notices hitting kindergartens soon...
Not like I expect any email from google either
One needs to be pretty isolated not to have any contacts that are @gmail.com.
Alphabet would first have to get past The Walt Disney Company, whose ABC television network is commonly known in the business as the "Alphabet Network".
Yet "Activision Blizzard" is before Alphabet, and Activision was named to be before Atari. The race to the front of the phone book continued with three other companies started by Activision alumni: Accolade (Populous; HardBall), Acclaim (home versions of Smash TV, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam, as well as numerous movie and TV licenses), and Absolute (A Boy and His Blob; Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors).
Just Alphabet?!
Did they want to be on the first page in the phonebook? AAAlphabet would've been even better.
Is Gmail going to be renamed Amail?
Someone else owns alphabet.com and they didn't buy it prior to the announcement?!
Must be a typo, they're already known as Google Alwaysbeta
rewriting history since 2109
On the downside, this will make shuffling people and resources around between their different projects much more difficult, and likewise will make it harder for ideas to get heard that don't pertain to the current business division.
It probably also goes some distance to protecting Google's product development from any threats against its advertising business by cranking regulators.
And courts. This helps to segment Google's advertising business so that if they get slammed by a government for refusing to censor, it's much harder to go after the parent company's assets. It's risk-management for shareholders.
The rumor on the Google blog is that Twitter was looking to offer Sundar Pichai a CEO position, so this move was made to keep him.
Perhaps there are some additional legal protections gained by doing this reorg as well.
-- Everything is wonderful until you know something about it.
Dos this mean that the new company is not beholden to the old slogan: "Don't be evil"?
Maybe they'll work out a new one - "Own all the letters" or somesuch.
Google's shit never quite makes it through beta.
Googah: makin things beta.
The new conglomerate is named "Alphabet". And It has as its Executive Chair, Eric Schmidt.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
Therefore, Larry and Sergey report to Eric and Sundar report to both Larry and Sergey.
This is the chief problem of Slashdot.
Slashdot moderators post "stories" that are wrong in the most simple of facts and fabricated for a political purpose!
Eat nuclear shit Slashdot, time is NOT on your side.
Ha ha
i guess someone in Munich is about to get rich(er)... maybe (geworden sein ab). "whois alphabet.com":
Registrant Name: Domain Manager
Registrant Organization: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
Registrant Street: Petuelring 130, Dept. AJ-35
Registrant City: Munich
Registrant Postal Code: 80788
Registrant Country: DE
It's popular to explain why they created an umbrella company and offer your theories. But I am convinced of this: the general public is not aware of the reason at this time.
I'll offer a very general reason they would do this, I don't have the details: doing this creates a financial/legal advantages for Larry Page and Sergey Brin. What kind of advantage? Why does it create the advantage? I don't know. But why do business people do anything?
I could be wrong, but I don't think it is for the "soft" reasons that people are positing now, i.e. it explains the structure better, it highlights that Google is not a "conventional company". This is a big change, and probably an expensive and time-consuming one. And making everyone aware of this "Alphabet" brand is a big pain in the ass.
I think the reasons they did this are very specific and concrete, but we just don't know what those reasons are at this point.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
"Google - An Alphabet Company".
Sounds like the 'g-tards' wish they had style and were partying in the early 90's, so now their stoopid AI is melting their brains with trippy research drugs that are just do do in their deep mind garbage dump business - beaten by a black swan ! and they never saw it coming
XYZ
Sooner or later, someone had to try to trademark or copyright the alphabet. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Soup. What else?
Android was purchased as well, by Android Inc., which was purchased in 2005
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
TX it6
In other news another top Fortune 500 company, based in the caffeine capital of the world, decides to rename itself after a nocturnal African animal that looks like a cross between an anteater and a pig.
Modern companies organize using Apps. Also Google is for Cows, Cows say Moo, and Slashdot is ran by the Geeks and Nerds Association of America.
Enough already you have milked that stupid cow of yours dry. I suggest you try self flagellation with a milking machine on a specific part of your anatomy, in your case it might be more productive than constantly slagging the cows. STOP giving the dairy farmers and Bessy a bad name you insensitive clod!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
As per US security and Exchange commission, "On August 10, 2015, Google Inc. (“Google”) announced plans to create a new public holding company, Alphabet Inc. (“Alphabet”), and a new operating structure to increase management scale and focus on its consolidated businesses. Under the new operating structure, its main Google business will include search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure (the “Google business”). Businesses such as Calico, Nest, and Fiber, as well as its investing arms, such as Google Ventures and Google Capital, and incubator projects, such as Google X, will be managed separately from the Google business." Also another info, it has xyz domain. It shows Google's best Easter Egg too...
Alphabet+
Google hasn't left enough users hanging due to project terminations, so they are now using creative ways to shutdown even more projects.
C - confused by the decision.
J - Joke. The story sounds like something out of the Onion
Google doing everything it can to avoid paying taxes. But yeah they're allegedly not evil
TLA's or couldn't agree on one?
My roadside service comes before Aardvark. AAA FTW!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
This is nothing of the sort. Still all same company
"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
Petronious, circa A.D. 60 (or possibly Charlton Ogburn Jr. in 1957)
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. During our reorganizations, several commanding officers were tried out on us, which added to the discontinuity.
Google "Companies ruined or almost ruined by Indians";
Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired.
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot).
Apple - R&D CLOSED in India in 2006.
Apple - Foreign guest worker "Helen" Hung Ma caused the disastrous MobileMe product rollout.
Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010).
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA)
Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America.
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int
Dell - call center (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Delta call centers (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Fannie Mae- Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty.
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers)
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing.
Microsoft - Lian Yang, Microsoft-Contracted Engineer, Arrested in Smuggling Plot After Another FBI Sting in Portland in 2010
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled)
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed).
Qantas - See AirBus above
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure)
Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m).
Skype ( Yarlagadda fired)
State of Indiana $867 billion FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued
State of Texas failed IBM project.
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, has to be sold off to Oracle).
United - call center (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure)
World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data).
Casteism
Why Microsoft/Google can't elevate an Entrepreneur as CEO?
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Casteism
and Alphabet creates an application/service called "Soup"...
The cynic in me likes to think they are really re-branding the company to be more meaningful...
In that most of their stuff is in "Alpha" too long and taking "bets" on crazy technology!
Who is "Susan"?
https://abc.xyz/
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Finally google reveals it was all a joke
It's going to let them invest in these really interesting long term projects without shareholders bitching about the risk.
Yes. It's all about segmenting the business to limit risk. Self-driving cars are the big one that come to mind as they would be insane if they didn't put it in its own risk-bubble, because they don't know the economics yet of whether juries will always blame self-driving cars, for example.