Google Reorganizes, Becomes A Subsidiary Of "Alphabet"

Google has always made waves about the innovations they venture into. They’ve worked on self-driven cars, considered using drones and balloons to power wireless internet in areas with zero connectivity, and gave the world Google Glass. They’ve always been at the cutting edge of innovation, and they’ve more than surpassed the tech giants they’ve modeled themselves after.

This week, Google announced a massive reorganization, and it will be under a larger umbrella company, “Alphabet.”

Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will head Alphabet. Page will be the CEO, while Brin stands as President. Since October 2014, former head for Chrome, Google Apps, and Android, and former Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai has been running most of Google’s units. He was, essentially, working as Google’s COO since October 2014. On August 10th, 2015, Google named him “CEO” of the Alphabet subsidiary.

As writes, Page and Brin now have “the moonshots,” or Google’s innovation arm. These innovations may or may not work, but at best, they gave it a shot. As the quote by W. Clement Stone says, “Aim for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Indeed, Google, now Alphabet, is bent on changing the world, and this reorganization aims to ensure that founders Page and Brin will be free to focus on what they really want to do.

Aside from Project Loon, which is the name for the efforts to provide Internet to far-flung areas using balloons, Alphabet also has Calico, a project that Google started back in 2013, which aims to conduct research on how to “beat death.” While it is not yet clear how Calico will achieve that, they’ve already set up the machinery to dig into the problem it aims to solve.

As of the moment, Alphabet is made up of Google, and all the products associated with it, including YouTube and Android. The more conventional subsidiaries include Fiber, which is working on providing affordable, high-speed Internet; while Google Capital and Google Ventures are into investing and funding startups.

The more innovative arms of Alphabet include Google X, which is the subsidiary responsible for engineering self-driving cars and Nest, which works on smarthomes and its associated internet-connected devices.

Calico, as mentioned, may now be under Alphabet instead of Google.

While YouTube and Android are currently under the Google umbrella, Business Insider speculates that it may soon be under their own companies under the Alphabet arm. As of the moment, YouTube head Susan Wojcicki doesn’t answer to Sundar Pichai. The latter point may be a clue that YouTube will be a separate entity under Alphabet.

This reorganization will hopefully create a leaner, meaner, more efficient, more innovative Google, not to mention a more innovative, more productive Alphabet.