1) Google announced in August that it will
restructure its business. At the end of the day on Friday, it will spin out its exotic projects like
driverless cars and anti-aging research into
separate companies. Alphabet will become the
parent company of all of those smaller companies,
one of which is Google.
2) Don't worry, you won't notice any changes -- at
least for now. At its most basic level, Google is just
renaming itself "Alphabet" and creating a subsidiary
business called "Google." The new Google will
continue as the consumer-facing brand and will run
all the products you've heard of, including search,
Android, YouTube, Maps and Google Apps.
3) Don't expect to hear much from Alphabet
( , Tech30 ) itself. It will be a holding
company, with no consumer products of its own.
Alphabet doesn't own the rights to Alphabet.com.
Its website is abc.xyz , and it's as bare-bones as
they come.
4) Alphabet will be organized like Warren Buffett's
Berkshire Hathaway ( ). Each business,
including Google, will have its own CEO. They will
all report to Alphabet CEO (former Google chief)
Larry Page, who has been a longtime admirer of
Buffett's managing style.
5) Page and fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin
are giving up their reins at Google to take over
Alphabet. Page will be CEO and Brin will be
president of Alphabet.
6) The new CEO of Google is Sundar Pichai . He's a
well-liked executive who's had a meteoric rise since
he joined Google in 2004. He led the Google Toolbar
team, then Chrome. He was then given control of
Android and eventually every Google product not
named YouTube. As CEO, he'll oversee YouTube
too, although Susan Wojcicki will remain YouTube's
chief executive.
Related: Who is Sundar Pichai?
7) Alphabet's structure is designed to give each
separate business more independence and freedom
to grow. In a memo to investors , Page said he
wants to make the company "cleaner and more
accountable." Since smart home company Nest, the
experimental Google X, and age-fighting Calico don't
really have much to do with Google's core search
business, spinning them off makes a good deal of
sense.
8) Google hired a big-time chief financial officer
from Wall Street a few months ago. Ruth Porat,
now the CFO of Alphabet, had said that she wanted
to add more transparency to Google's business.
Alphabet's new structure will give investors a better
understanding of how well each of Google's former
"side projects" (now Alphabet subsidiaries) are
performing, as well as more clarity about Google's
core business.
9) The Alphabet move was done in part to appease
investors. Shareholders had been growing
increasingly anxious about Google's funding of
"moonshot" investments that may never pay off.
Since 90% of Google's sales came from advertising,
Page was criticized for not devoting more of his
time to search. Now, Google will be a separately run
company without its CEO worrying about those
"side projects."
10) Shares of Google will begin trading as Alphabet
under the same "GOOGLE" ticker beginning on
Monday, October 5.
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