Google now owned by new company Alphabet

Larry Page, Google co-founder and CEO. JUSTIN SULLIVAN

GOOGLE HAS REORGANIZED itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.

“What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google,” Google co-founder Larry Page said in a blog post this afternoon. “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.”

In other words, Google will continue to run internet-centric services such as Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. But “moonshot” projects such as the X Lab and the Calico life extension project will operate as somewhat separate entities.

“Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence,” Page wrote.

Page will serve as CEO of Alphabet, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin will serve as president. Longtime Page lieutenant Sundar Pichai will take over as Google CEO.

“In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We’ll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation,” Page said.

According to Page’s post, Alphabet will eventually report the earnings of Google separate from the other spinoff companies.According to the company’s SEC filing, Alphabet will eventually replace Google as the publicly traded company on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and all shares of Google will convert to shares of Alphabet. Company shares will continue to trade on the Nasdaq under the same GOOGL and GOOG ticker symbols.