Google as we know it is no more. In a surprise move that left many at Wall Street baffled, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced that Google will be now be part of a larger umbrella corporation, Alphabet Inc. The trimmed down Google will now be headed by Sundar Pichai as the CEO.
As CEO and President of the newly instated Alphabet Inc. Page and Brin will oversee the operations of Google and several other projects including a drone delivery operation dubbed Wing, alongwith life-extension project Calico. Essentially, the move towards a holding company is a major financial restructuring where Google is separating the profit making businesses of Search, Ads, YouTube, Android, Google Play Store and Maps from the long-term projects like Google X which won't be profitable for years.
Now each of these new units of Wing, Calico, Google Fiber, Google X and other affiliated units will have their own CEO and leadership teams, and work as independent units from Google, part of the larger Alphabet Inc. The funding for these projects will still be made through Sundar Pichai's Google overseen by Brin and Page.
This brings in a new era for Google with Sundar Pichai taking the helm. Pichai recently has had greater involvement in day-to-day operations at Google, many have said previously that he was being groomed to become the CEO of Google. There have been speculations that he was being considered as the CEO of Microsoft after the departure of Steve Ballmer, but the Google co-founders trusted him with more responsibilities. He now has one of the most coveted roles in the tech industry and from what we have seen of Chrome, ChromeOS, ChromeBooks and recently of Android under him, things are looking bright. His leadership seems to have a direction, not just for today but what we might be working with in the future 2-3 years from now.
Sundar was the brains behind the development of Chrome browser, which incidentally now runs on 1/3rd of all PC's and has become the de-facto browser on Android. He was instrumental in keeping Samsung straight when they were trying to overlay Android with Magazine UI, and negotiated with them to trim it down.
With this restructuring, Google's founders and the company's long term goals/projects don't have to be in the eye of the investors. They would see Google as a separate unit, a subsidiary. Google will now be publicly traded as Alphabet Inc., and all shares of Google will be transferred as shares of Alphabet. The previous ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL will be retained.
This is a resurgence for a company separating its core business, from everything else they want to do.
