Google announces controversially named parent company Alphabet

Internet giant Google has announced its new holding company called Alphabet, with the company taking abc.xyz URL, but rather surprisingly, not the associated Twitter handles.

Google will form the main part of the company, but Alphabet will also include a number of other initiatives led by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are the company's founders. Google shareholders will now become shareholders of Alphabet Inc. but the company will trade on Nasdaq under the old ticker symbols, GOOGL and GOOG.

Larry Page wrote in a blog post;

"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).”

Alphabet will be led by Page as CEO of Alphabet and Sundar Pichai will take over as CEO of Google. Pichai joined the corporation back in 2004 and has been involved in the development of Google projects and products including Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome and Chrome OS. He took over the role of Android head in March 2013 from Andy Rubin.

Page continued;

“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.

"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."

"Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure.

"We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search!

"We also like that it means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for! I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products - the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands."

However, the name Alphabet has caused quite a storm in the world of leasing, as BMW-owned leasing giant, Alphabet International, has announced a statement confirming that “the possibility of any trademark infringement is currently under review”.

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