On 2 October, 11 years after its creation, Google officially became a subsidiary of a new holding company called Alphabet. The Google brand remains dedicated to internet-related products and services, while other projects have been spun off into their own companies under the Alphabet umbrella.
Alphabet's website, the quirkily domain-named abc.xyz -- alphabet.com was already owned by a division of BMW -- is currently home to a letter from CEO Larry Page, a link to Google's investor information site, and little else. Page's letter explains the meaning behind the new name: "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."
The move, first announced in August and finalised late last week, also saw Sundar Pichai, formerly product chief at Google, is now CEO of the new-look Google.
Alphabet Inc. is run by Google's original co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, acting as CEO and president respectively. All Google shares have been converted into Alphabet stock, which will continue to appear on stock tickers as GOOG and GOOGL.
Most of Alphabet's staff still work for Google, which remains the corporate home of Android, YouTube, Google Apps, Google Maps and Google Ads, as well as the eponymous search engine that started it all. Another seven companies have been established as Alphabet subsidiaries. These are Calico, Google Life Sciences, Nest Labs, Google Fiber, Google X, Google Ventures and Google Capital.
Google X, previously Google's experimental research division, is now its own company under Alphabet, with current projects including the Wing drone delivery system, self-driving cars, Project Aura (formerly Google Glass) and Project Loon, which aims to enable universal internet access using a network of balloons carrying wireless access points. Google X is also home to the Deep Dream neural network project for speech and image recognition.
Calico, short for "California Life Company", is involved in biotech research focussed on longevity, with the goal of developing technology to "slow aging and counteract age‑related diseases." Google Life Sciences, formerly a division of Google X, also operates in the health sector, with projects including glucose-checking contact lenses for people with diabetes, a project to build a genetic and molecular blueprint of what a healthy human should look like and nanoparticles designed to detect early signs of disease such as cancer.
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