Google Founders: Goodbye Google, Hello Alphabet

Big changes at Google today: Its founders have a created a parent company for it called Alphabet and will focus on running that. Google itself will still exist, but in a "slimmed down" version that will be run by current Google exec Sundar Pichai, writes Larry Page in a company blog post. Co-founder Sergey Brin will be Alphabet's president. Essentially, Google is separating its "search, YouTube, and other Web companies from its research and investment divisions," explains Bloomberg. Google is, in fact, disappearing in one sense: Alphabet will replace it as the publicly traded entity, reports MarketWatch. Shares were up nearly 6% on news of the restructuring.

Part of Page's explanation:

• "What is Alphabet? 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)."

Also included will be the X lab and Wing, the company's drone project, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related,” writes Page. (More Google stories.)