• Marketing Land
  • Sections
    • CMO
    • Social
    • SEM
    • SEO
    • Analytics
    • Display
    • Retail
    • MarTech
    • Resources
    • More
    • Home
  • Marketing Land
  • CMO
  • Social
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Analytics
  • Display
  • Retail
  • MarTech
  • Resources
  • More
  • SUBSCRIBE

Marketing Land

Marketing Land
  • CMO
  • Social
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Analytics
  • Display
  • Retail
  • MarTech
  • Resources
  • More
  • Home
  • Newsletters
  • Home
CMO Zone

Meet Alphabet, The New Conglomerate Absorbing Google That’s Run By Larry Page & Sergey Brin

As subsidiary, Google retains divisions of search, ads, Android, YouTube, apps and more. It also gains a new CEO, Sundar Pichai.

Danny Sullivan on August 10, 2015 at 5:04 pm
  • More
google-alphabet3-letters-blocks-education-ss-1920

Google’s being acquired. Its new owner will be Alphabet, a palace coup pulled off by Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page is to become CEO of the new Alphabet, Brin his president and Sundar Pichai, formally senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google, takes over as Google CEO.

Page shared the news today both on the Google blog and on the new Alphabet site. He wrote:

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. I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.

What is Alphabet? 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. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.

Alphabet will be replacing Google as the traded entity, with all shares of Google converting to Alphabet stock. It will still be known as GOOG and GOOGL, however. The company has also filed a Form 8-K here with the US Securities & Exchange Commission, outlining its plans.

YouTube, Android, Ads & More Remain Part Of Google

From the filing, Google will retain control of at least these business units:

  • Search
  • Ads
  • Maps
  • Apps
  • YouTube
  • Android

It will also keep control of unspecified technical infrastructure.

What’s Part Of Alphabet?

What makes up the alphabet of the new Alphabet? From the filing and blog post, Alphabet includes

  1. Calico (the folks who want you to live forever)
  2. Fiber (high speed internet)
  3. Google (Search, Maps, YouTube, Android, Ads, Apps)
  4. Google Ventures (venture capital business)
  5. Google Capital (investment fund)
  6. Google X (auto-driving cars, Google Glass, internet by balloon, moonshots)
  7. Life Sciences (the glucose-sensing contact lens people)
  8. Nest (smoke alarms, home cameras, thermostats & connected home devices)

It’s unclear where many other things will go. Project Fi, Google’s virtual mobile network, for example. Will that stay part of Google or roll under Alphabet? That’s not been made clear.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that YouTube — which has its own CEO in the form of long-time Googler Susan Wojcicki — hasn’t been rolled out from under Google.

It might be that after the initial transition, this and other spin-outs could happen.

Alphabet’s New Management

Alphabet’s new management structure is effectively hijacking all of Google’s old management structure and will be like this:

  • CEO: Larry Page
  • President: Sergey Brin
  • Executive Chairman: Eric E. Schmidt
  • CFO: Ruth Porat
  • Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Chief Legal Officer & Secretary: David C. Drummond

Google’s New CEO: Sundar Pichai

Over at Google, the big management change is Pichai taking over as CEO. He’ll be only the third person to ever occupy that role at Google. Page was the first CEO, then Schmidt, then Page returned to it. Pichai has been widely praised as a sensible, no-nonsense executive who gets stuff done.

Aside from Pichai, Porat will remain CFO at Google in addition to her new role in that job at Alphabet. Other changes haven’t been announced.

Google’s chief business officer Omid Kordestani will be leaving that position and taking up a new post as advisor to both Alphabet and Google.

How The Change Will Happen

Right now, Google is still Google, owning everything. Later this year — no specific date is set — Google will create a holding company called Alphabet that will absorb all of Google’s stock. Then that company will technically merge with Google, then spit Google out as a subsidiary.

Hooli & More

Back to the Alphabet post, an Easter Egg is apparently buried within it. Spotted and tweeted by Jack Clark, among others, there’s a hidden link to the Hooli web site, that fictional giant conglomerate of HBO’s Silicon Valley:

Google makes @SiliconHBO joke in source code of https://t.co/LpwRA1Wq8n pic.twitter.com/9ifznkp3SW

— Jack Clark (@mappingbabel) August 10, 2015

That link potentially could cause Alphabet to wind up penalized in Google, by the way. It’s unlikely but possible, as our post on Search Engine Land explains.

Meanwhile, the Alphabet.com website — owned apparently by BMW and not related to Google, which is at abc.xyz — has been overwhelmed by people going to the wrong place:

.@dannysullivan Looks like #alphabet overloaded this poor website #google pic.twitter.com/ELzKG3j2fs

— Cisco Adler (@ADLERDESIGN_CO) August 10, 2015

If you’re looking for more coverage, you won’t go wrong with the gazillion tech publications also covering the news, as aggregated here on Techmeme.

Also see our related coverage:

  • Sundar Pichai Appointed Google CEO As Google Becomes Division Of Alphabet Inc.
  • Twitter Takes On Google’s Alphabet: Today’s Best Tweets So Far
  • Is Bing Trolling Google & Alphabet With ABC.WTF Redirect?
  • Irony Alert: Could Alphabet’s Hidden Link To Hooli Get It Banned In Google?

And from my youth, here’s Big Bird trying to figure out what Alphabet means:



About The Author

Danny Sullivan
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Related Topics

AlphabetChannel: CMO ZoneGoogleGoogle: AcquisitionsGoogle: Business Issues

We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn Group.

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

Next Event: Sept. 14-15, 2021

Available On-Demand: March 2021

Available On-Demand: October 2020

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

Available On-Demand: SMX Create

May 18-19, 2021: SMX London

June 8-9, 2021: SMX Paris

June 15-16, 2021: SMX Advanced

June 21-22, 2021: SMX Advanced Europe

August 17, 2021: SMX Convert

November 9-10, 2021: SMX Next

December 14, 2021: SMX Code

Available On-Demand: SMX

Available On-Demand: SMX Report

×


Learn More About Our SMX Events

White Papers

  • Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms
  • Selecting a Customer Data Platform For Your Organization: The 2020 Gartner Market Guide
  • The Complete Guide to Web Core Vitals
  • The New Era of Automation in SEO
  • Nielsen Annual Marketing Report: Era of Adaptation
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • Drive Customer Engagement with the Power of Personalization
  • 7 Use Cases That Prove Why You Should Implement DAM
  • Accelerate Your SEO & Content Marketing Program with 4 Key Milestones
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Local Marketing Solutions for Multi-Location Businesses
  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research

Attend SMX For Only $199

h
Receive daily marketing news & analysis.

Channels

  • MarTech
  • CMO
  • Social
  • SEM
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Analytics
  • Retail
  • Display

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • SMX

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Youtube

© 2021 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.