Importance of Alphabet, the new face of Google
View(s):The beginning of this month was marked with some jarring news for the tech industry, ultimately leading, last week, to what one media outlet had termed an “exodus” of Google staff. While Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election was gaining importance locally, the rest of the world at large was waking up to the age of Alphabet. Google’s Alphabet, to be precise.
And, while many think Google’s organisational restructuring is unnecessary, scores more think that there is a lot more to the story than a simple organisational chart re-shuffle, especially with more details emerging daily. After all, this is the company that made billions from effectively monetising search, and billions upon billions more from big data applications that followed.
To start with, what do we really know about Alphabet? According to media reports, Alphabet will be the parent entity encompassing a number of previous Google subsidiaries by year’s end. From Google X, featuring projects like Google Glass, driverless cars and even Google Loon, which is soon to be deployed in Sri Lanka, to Fiber, focused on high-speed Internet; it will also entail venture capital-centred Google Ventures, the more long-term investment-oriented Google Capital, anti-aging researcher Calico, and even Nest Labs smart home systems, with the original Google still in existence yet slimmed down to just its core businesses, including Search, Gmail, Android, YouTube, Maps, etc.
A case in point, news surfaced last week that Alphabet would be starting its first new standalone company, Life Sciences. Spun off from the old Google, the section was responsible for ideas like smart contact lenses to monitor blood sugar levels of diabetics, nano particles within the blood stream to detect and fight cancer, and a study focused on creating the most in-depth human body and genome model.
However, despite the “moonshot” ideas being bandied about, the true genius may actually be in the new organisational structure being created for Alphabet, which has resulted in increased investor confidence. By divorcing their more pie-in-the-sky ideas and stepping down from the Google cash cow, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now CEO and President of Alphabet, have seemingly got the shareholders on their side. The hope being that cofounder’s personal fortunes of approximately US$ 30 billion each, tied in with Google’s shares, will go towards these “moonshot” ventures, instead of Google funding them directly, as was the case previously.
Meanwhile, others have also cited a legal separation from Google, and Search in particular, which frequently butt heads with China over censorship issues, as helping other Alphabet subsidiaries gain more ground in the world’s biggest consumer market. Additionally, there are also the thoughts that this restructuring could help alleviate brand confusion, or even just keep the vision of co-founders Page and Brin on the big picture instead of getting down to the nitty-gritty of daily running a giant of Google’s magnitude. Either way, Alphabet seems to have had its desired impact so far.