This is a big move, which might also possibly help with EU anti-trust accusations by splitting up the big-ol' monolithic GOOG into functionally separate units.
Did I miss something in the announcement? When people say that Google is "monolithic", they're saying that Google contains Youtube (#1 video site), search (#1 search), Android (#1 mobile OS), maps (#1 map site), Gmail (#1 email site?), and G+ (Facebook competitor). These companies appear to remain inside the Google corporation after the "restructuring", and so this doesn't ameliorate any of EU's concerns.
I think this is more about changing what Larry and Sergey do all day.
The announcement seems deliberately vague. You're right in that it doesn't specifically address the EU concerns, but it creates a structure where that's easier to do.
It prepares you, in terms of financial visibility, experience, etc, if the most painful of anti-trust remedies (breakup) ever happens. AT&T, for example, would have likely proposed different terms for their breakup if they had better visibility into how Western Electric would have performed on its own.
It provides more public financial visibility into some areas of concern, early. For example, it looks like Google fiber isn't staying with Google. Google fiber is probably a concern for at least US anti-trust regulators.
The new structure won't affect the EU's investigations, as you had stated earlier. All the components the EU will whine about are still under the Google subsidiary (Search, Maps, YouTube, Android).
The only companies exiting from Googles purview are Calico, Nest, Fiber, Ventures, Capital,and X. None of which were likely candidates for antitrust prosecution.
"Under the new operating structure, its main Google business will include search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure (the “Google business”)"
Although what often happens is that now divisions compete against either in suboptimal ways. Search and Maps are separate? Great, until Search decides maps are really cool and starts building their own version, again. It takes a strong hand at the top to prevent division heads from viewing their peers as rivals.
I'm pretty sure Search and Maps will still be operating under the Google organization. They're just spinning off their more "wacky" projects that aren't directly related to Internet technology.
I love how they buried the "Sundar Pichai is new Google CEO" bit in there. In any case, this sounds promising and it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
So all google divisions are now individual companies inside a conglomerated called Alphabet where Larry is the CEO and Sergei the President. Sundar Pichai is now the new CEO of Google. Is that right? Why do you think they are moving this way? Regulations? Taxes? What about Eric Schmidt?
EDIT: All google subsidiaries are now subsidiaries of a conglomerated called Alphabet. Google is a subsidiary too. Google stock will now be Alphabet stock.
I'd assume it was a move to make failure easier. Sclerosis is the natural fate of large corporations but variation and selection is an obvious way to help with that.
The danger of conglomerates that give so much freedom to their subsidiaries is that said subsidiaries start actually competing against each other and hurting the business overall.
> The danger of conglomerates that give so much freedom to their subsidiaries is that said subsidiaries start actually competing against each other and hurting the business overall.
Google seems to like competing against themselves, so I'm not sure that's something that they are particularly worried about.
Danger? You mean benefit? Companies not succeeding themselves even as they fall from relevance is a massive reason why large companies fail.
Look at Blackberry, they had an internal project working against the rest of the company (namely Android on Blackberry hardware) that could, had it been allowed, saved the company. Instead Blackberry are either going to be purchased OR go bankrupt.
Honestly internal competition is an argument for doing something like this, not against it.
Sony took internal competition too far in the 90s and created a situation where they developed severe internal NIH syndrome and wasted a whole lot of resources with different divisions re-implementing things. The system produced some of the most revolutionary and iconic consumer electronics ever before it went off the rails. The danger I was referring to was repeating Sony's mistakes.
My current blackberry device runs android apps. So the project seems to have been a somewhat of a success.
The company appears to still be alive and still has a few billion dollars in the bank despite now years of people saying that they're going bankrupt. I wish I was 'going bankrupt' like Blackberry.
Blackberry seems to have secured a solid niche position in mobile security, despite losing the majority of their mobile phone business to more end-consumer electronics driven companies (primarily samsung & apple).
I didn't read it that way. All of Google's subsidiaries are subsidiaries of Alphabet, as is Google. But divisions inside of Google (Android, Youtube, &c) remain Google.
The big news is that Larry and Sergey are stepping back into a more Warren and Charlie kind of role, and Sundar Pichai is taking over as CEO of Google.
My question is, what does "slimmed down" Google mean?
> My question is, what does "slimmed down" Google mean?
It looks like they're taking all the experimental research stuff out of Google and making them direct subsidiaries of Alphabet instead, particularly projects that aren't directly related to the Internet.
The article talked about Life Sciences and Calico, and I have to wonder if other stuff like the self-driving cars are going to become direct Alphabet subsidiaries as well (then again, maybe not: I assume the self-driving cars are tied closely to Google Maps).
I think it just means the Google division will no longer contain the parts that have been spun off. There may be others but from the announcement that looks like: Life Sciences, Calico, Ventures and Capital, and X lab. Later on in the announcement they call Google "slightly slimmed down" which seems like a bit of an understatement.
Presumably they hope that something outside of the new google division will blow up and make the divisions a bit less lopsided.
I wonder where platforms (the HW company inside of Google that builds all their machines and switches) ends up. If they make it their own 'letter' (H is for Hardware?) then they could potentially have it build data center hardware for other companies. That would be interesting.
Related to my response to another one of your comments, this would be a VERY Samsung move; I don't know if they'll do it, though. Depends if they see their infrastructure hardware more as a competitive advantage for their internet-services business or as a marketable product in itself.
It's a twist on "adult supervision". They have put an adult in charge of making money. Meanwhile, Larry and Sergey get to keep playing around with all sorts of exotic projects that may or may not eventually make money.
My own guess: it allows upcoming management/leadership to exercise more independence in the various divisions of "Google". Further, People like titles, and it's hard to share them.
A very good point. Didn't look like Sundar Pichai was going to oust Larry Page as CEO anytime soon. This gives everyone the ability to continue their upward mobility (and responsibility), with increased independence from aligned (but separate) businesses within Goog--er, Alphabet.
IOW, Nest reports to Alphabet, and so does Google. Both are aligned, but separate.
The intent is faster speed, greater independence and run like leaner startup. Also, additional career paths for employees, especially for the senior folks aspiring to be CEO.
True story. Rather than speed, I'd say independence is the goal. Warren & Charlie (BRK) have proven that this model works - purchase great companies, then let them continue to do their thing (albeit with more resources). All roads report up, but Dairy Queen doesn't wind up run by the same person as GEICO on the executive level.
So long as Sergey and Larry (& Co.) keep from micro-managing, I think this structure will be enormously beneficial. I can't see how someone running Google's web properties would be able to move quickly when also having a hands-on responsibility for developing a self-driving car and a glucose-sensing contact lens.
Most certainly not the only reason why and possibly not even the most important, but the EU has started to load up on the anti monopoly against Google recently, with talks about breaking it up in Europe (similar to the Microsoft case in the US some years ago, although it didn't go through and in this case it would only split in EU).
> The European parliament has approved a motion calling for tougher regulation of internet search, including suggesting breaking up Google as a solution to its dominance in Europe.
That certainly wasn't a done deal nor even agreed that's what the commission would really aim for, but the heat was mounting and Google's move cut them short just in case.
If you compare GE to Google, or Samsung to Google, then Google doesn't seem to have an absurdly diversified portfolio. But GE doesn't have a back-end that can facilitate easily realizing marketplace advantages in jet engines based on what they've done in light bulbs. Google can do exactly this. And the EU has taken notice. It would make sense that this is the primary underlying issue, even if the move is primarily proactive.
But isnt this consolidation instead of separation? Or are they creating this entity so that they will keep Google intact even if they are ordered to separate?
This makes it easier to spin off a Google EU corporation, owned by Alphabet, built specifically to manage the intricacies of EU law. Google EU would just be another subsidiary, that perhaps licenses its technology from Alphabet or Google US.
I hope Eric Schmidt won't manage Google Talk / Hangouts anymore. Then there will be a chance of fixing this mess back.
UPDATE:
Hm. Judging by downvotes, some folks here liked the fact that he killed XMPP federation of Google Talk and didn't propose Hangouts as an alternative open protocol. What an achievement.
I do not know much about big business financials, but this seems like a move that would allow Google to separate its experimental or research-based businesses that do not turn a profit from its giant bulging revenue beasts. It will likely allow Google to post better quarterlies, and push their stock up even higher.
Appointing Sundar as CEO also allows them to focus more on the cool stuff in Alphabet and let Sundar run the meat and potatoes Google operations. Interesting moves.
Except it is the conglomerate that is going to trade on the market, not the individual business units. They are changing their corporate structure to be more like GE or Lockheed. All the units will still be summed together come earnings time.
That is just more transparency into internal operations. Different divisions of Microsoft report separately, but a division taking a billion dollar write-off still impacts the share price.
i'd say it makes perfect sense. google search becomes google, and the rest of the company (cars, cubesat internet, balloon internet, more down-to-earth ideas) belong somewhere else.
Look at the history of conglomerates like Mitsubishi, or Berkshire Hathaway. Alphabet is remarkable since it's a very organized and name-concerned conglomeration, though.
Many large companies in other sectors are structured like this. Google, through its diverse acquisitions has now, in that sense, become like a lot of the older conglomerates like GE, Berkshire Hathaway, Raytheon, DuPont, Honeywell, UTC, 3M, etc. To different extents, these are all organized like Alphabet will be. Take branding: core products may be sold under the company's name, other products may be sold in a nearly autonomous fashion. Similarly, quarterly earnings calls are centered on the performance of each of these sub-units.
I thought the GP was asking whether a conglomerate was formed in this bottom-up restructuring before. Many of the other conglomerates seemed to have become large through parent companies making or buying subsidiaries, not a subsidiary forming the parent.
This seems largely, at my admittedly brief viewing, to try to quell some of the structural concerns around all of these "non-core" businesses that the Artist Formerly Known as Google are participating in.
I think it will streamline the management of all of these different businesses, at least make it clear where Larry and Sergey are focusing their efforts.
Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google? Many (most) of the moonshot projects failed (which is normal), and I have the feeling that these events had a somewhat bad fallout on the image of the whole company (questioning its invicibility to some extent, mostly in the eyes of the press).
If we are to include less ambitious stuff, Google Video, Orkut, Chromebooks (never went far), Reader, Google Code, Dart, nothing much came out of Morotola, etc.
And let's see were those "self driving cars" will go, market-wise...
Yes, they sell decently, but do no represent any profit for Google (which gives the OS for free).
It's around 5-6 million units sold anually, but, as Google themselves said, Google don't make any money of off them.
Samsung, Acer, etc, who produce the units do, but again, in total it represents a tiny slither of laptop profits due to the small margins. Most Chromebooks (70%) go to the education market as cheapo laptops.
They suffer from the gulf state problem where they make so much money from one thing that nothing else will ever be important enough to really be successful.
I would imagine that Google indirectly profits by having more users using Google as their default search engine and by encouraging the world to rely more on the web.
Edit: Also, in the past Google would pay Firefox to have its users use Google as the default search engine and Google gets the equivalent of this for free with each Chromebook sold.
Since Dart never went anywhere adoption-wise, and even abandoned plans for its own VM in browsers (not to mention its purpose obsoleted by the announcement of WebAssembly -- since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming).
And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no money at all for Google, and all constrained to the niche educational market (schools buying them for their students).
> since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming
Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :)
There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.
A modern GC is a large, complex beast. Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. all have their own implementations of them, and those implementations are specific to the semantics of those languages. (For example, Python's early finalizers. Ruby's FFI, etc.) That's a big blob of code for you to push down the wire with your application every time the user hits your site.
Also, that GC doesn't know how to play nice with the browser's own GC. If you have an event handler that has a reference to some Ruby object that in turn has a reference to some DOM node, neither GC can trace through that path and tell when those objects can be collected. That means you get memory leaks.
On top of that, the language implementation itself is large. The Python executable on my machine is 2 MB. Do you want to add another 2 MB to your app? Is Python enough better than JS to justify forcing all of your users on their crappy mobile networks to download that before any interactivity begins on your page? What about when you start using the additional 45 MB of standard library that comes with Python?
Also, how do you make those standard libraries work in a browser? Who is going to rewrite them all to stop using the native OS libraries they currently use and instead rely on APIs that are available in JS?
That's not to say this is an insurmountable problem. But my belief is that it's a big enough headache to outweigh the benefits you would get from writing your app in another higher level language.
Now, if your language can compile to JavaScript and has a decently small runtime library, that's a different story. At that point, you're back to only one GC and relatively little overhead for your language's semantics and core libraries. It means you don't have to worry about a large existing standard library that #includes everything under the sun.
This is why I think CoffeeScript, ClojureScript, Dart, etc. are feasible. But I don't think anyone will be writing web apps in Ruby or Python anytime soon. Languages that look syntactically similar to them (Opal, Red, Pyjamas, Brython, etc.), sure. But the real deal where you can have some app that does, I don't know, "import requests" and have it actually work in a shippably-sized web app? I think that's going to be a much harder path.
It's a great goal for the WebAssembly folks to work towards, but it's an aspirational goal.
>There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.
Actually that's part of the whole point of WebAssembly -- as Eich put it. It's not just to speedup emscripten style ports of C/C++ programs.
Eich's words: "Bottom line: with co-evolution of JS and wasm, in a few years I believe all the top browsers will sport JS engines that have become truly polyglot virtual machines".
I understand that's his goal, but I believe actually getting there is quite a ways off and may ultimately never happen. Of course, you can never say never on the web, but going from supporting C/C++ to supporting, say, Ruby or Python is a pretty fundamental change in how the system works.
> Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive
Dart started as a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development with a long-term plan that compile-to-JS might not be necessary on the web.
And its still a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development use.
Google Video, and Orkut, were complete failures and no longer exist. Successful products don't disappear without a trace. If they are closed by management when they otherwise might have succeeded, that is failure.
Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed.
Of course if we go back to the original question, Orkut and Reader were hardly "moonshots" in the first place (and Google Video was arguably just a standard project launch).
> Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android
Is it?
> By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine
If everything is a moonshot, nothing is, etc.
AFAIK both projects were just 20% time projects scaled up to three or four people[1]. A "moonshot" is obviously a wishy-washy term, but opportunity for success doesn't seem to be sufficient to call something that.
If you watch a video on youtube today it's actually hosted on googlevideo.com or something (i know because uBlock). I assume they threw the youtube backend away when they bought it :) So in that sense google video is still alive, just a different name.
If you are Google that reads as "Orkut only got traction in Brazil and India, hence failure". Maybe they could have sold it to some smaller company, but they tried to move the customers to their other services instead.
Chromebooks are pretty popular. The first generation wasn't very good but the more recent ones are selling well.
Reader was very popular relative to the size of the RSS reader market.
Google bought Motorola for the patent portfolio and sold off the rest, so I'm not sure how that was a failure. Motorola also turned around their mobile division with the Moto X under Google (over 100% increase in mobile sales due to the Moto X and company line of products)
I remember Orkut being very popular in Asia for a while.
All of that I wont argue with, except the characterization that reader was a success because Google owned the market.
I dont see how G closing down reader could have that count in the success column, especially considering how much bad blood it bred for G (and how little effort it would have likely meant to maintain it.)
They were absolutely moonshots. Reforming the entire way we do realtime communications? Reforming the entire way we do social interaction? Total moonshots, they just failed, but if they succeeded they would be billion dollar businesses.
They were absolutely pitched as huge ideas that would change everything we know about email and social networks. Bearing the scars of their public failures, Google started calling new projects moonshots to shape perception of the programs as chasing ideas, while preemptively deflecting any criticism of their readiness or desirability to large markets. They are not materially different from moonshots except in presentation.
Circles for different messages to different groups, as well as the universal profile for logging into all your favorite Google services. It's not my fault these were harebrained ideas, but they were presented as revolutionary. The ideas are still arguably revolutionary (Slack delivers where Wave failed) but Google's execution was lacking. Same fundamental issue facing so many of their other programs.
And the Russians dreamed of going to the moon but that's the rub with consumer products - the market has to accept them for it to be an accomplishment. Google thought they'd found the magic recipe and pitched it as something for everyone that was a huge breakthrough. Being first with features or flows doesn't matter at all. The only thing that matters is making it relevant to users' lives, which all parties failed at. Circles is a bad model for a mass market.
I think the implication about a moonshot is that nobody has been to the moon before the moonshot. The thing about Facebook's lunch is that lunch happens ever day at noon.
> Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google?
I don't think it hurt the consumer reputation, and it can't be about the investor reputation, since those things are still inside the entity (Alphabet) that investors will care about (at least, until a way to invest in the new "core" Google directly is offered, which may be part of the long-term plan -- it would explain why they indicated that they will report Google's financials separately within Alphabet's.)
I think you're right. Google was devolving into a fragmented corporation with no direction or vision. Alphabet helps the Google brand by de-fragmenting it and turning it into the "internet services" arm and putting Google X, Life Sciences, etc etc into their own, protected, sandboxes.
Doesn't this completely change what you are buying when you buy GOOGL shares?
It used to be you were investing in a search/ad company that owned a lot of other stuff. Now you are investing in a company that owns the leading search/ad company.
The difference is obviously academic but I think it will make a difference in how the shares are traded. Perception drives the market after all.
So Alphabet will start a new car company, and google can continue on as a search giant. It makes a lot of sense.
So many people keep saying their biggest fear of google is that they will turn devices like Google Glass, or the Google car into products to collect information on people. When those products themselves are viable business models.
Yes, but the issue is that Larry and Sergey see more value in user data than they do in "viable business models." So privacy is still a huge concern with any subsidiary of Alphabet. Google just became a synonym for privacy issues because that was the parent company - now Alphabet is that parent company. No less evil, just new.
* What was called "Google" will now be called "Alphabet", with Larry and Sergey as CEO and President.
* Much of the core business of the old Google will be operated in a division/subsidiary of the new Alphabet called "Google", of which Sundar Pichai will be CEO.
* The rest of the old Google's business will be in other units of Alphabet.
I find it easier to think of it as a name change and the creation of a new subordinate entity within the old organization with its own CEO than to think of it as creating a new entity above Google, and transferring lots of functions from Google to the new superior entity, transferring all stock in Google to stock in the new superior entity, and changing the leadership of Google.
They are refactoring. Google is being updated to make some of its sub-classes into new top-level classes (sharing some characteristics with Google) and retain the rest as sub-classes. But to do this it must create a new parent class (for Google, and all of the other newly promoted classes) which is the new Alphabet class.
I have very fond memories of early Google.com, and there always used to be a vivid spirit in their products that everything was so experimental and technically on the edge. That feeling has been gone for a very long time, but since Larry has come back it's been slowly returning. Call me what you want, but I feel like this is such a smart move for the founders' freedom to explore.
And the way they announced it is totally in line with the spirit. I'm sure there was a lot of technical work, and will be more, but they way it's all hidden in the back so that they can focus on the most important parts. I'm a fan.
Is this purely a function of sharding liability across a conglomerate of businesses? It seems like concentrating Google's ad revenue in a smaller, more efficient business unit is a nod to Berkshire Hathaway's method of business.
I can't recall this sort of thing happening in my lifetime, so it will be really interesting to see how this plays out. I also wonder how this would be treated if Google didn't have the crazy corporate structure they have now (where public shares are essentially non-equity and non-voting).
Edit: I am reasonably certain this is a tax and liability optimization strategy. It allows their more risky units to operate with separate liability from their cash cow.
Edit 2: I'm actually surprised the stock value hasn't tanked because most of the future potential of Google just got moved outside of the company. How much of Google's future value was based on X? I would say a non-trivial amount of the stock price is the anticipation of future profits, which are now no longer a part of the company the stock is intended to index.
Edit 3: Disregard Edit 2, I misread the release the second time through and assumed X was not part of the company :).
Actually, the price of Google's stock is based on expectations of future demand for Google's stock. It has little or nothing to do with the expectations of profits or the ability of the shareholders to receive them. This is true of all listed companies, and the more liquid their shares, the more true it is.
Yes. Because the Google part isn't being spun out to the shareholders but remaining a part of the conglomerate, this does nothing for the shareholders. The sea change would be if new-Google were a separate listed company returning its earnings to its shareholders. Instead it's a separate private company returning its earnings to Larry and Sergei to blow on whatever BS they want... just like it was yesterday.
About the only thing this changes is that ex-Google is now explicitly acknowledging to the public markets what everyone already knew: it's a conglomerate, only unlike other conglomerates, it has only a single viable business.
There's a pair of stock tickers that disagree with your assessment of the value of selling shares in that company. It seems to have worked out pretty well for everyone involved.
I've seen a lot of comparisons to Berkshire. Not every large conglomerate is Berkshire.
Berkshire is composed of pre-existing businesses that were themselves successful before being purchased. They are not experimental ventures that need to be subsidized. It is exactly the opposite: money is plowed into the strongest businesses. They each generate excess cash, and it is easier to reinvest that cash in some places than others. The conglomerate structure makes it possible to put the cash where it gets the best returns without having to pay taxes or transaction fees.
Alphabet has none of these properties, except the ability to allocate capital tax-free, but they already had that as Google.
Berkshire is pretty explicit about using the firehose of cash that their insurance businesses throw off, as well as the huge amounts of premium float they have, as capital for their other more profitable businesses.
What tax benefits this move might have is my question as well. It seems like if this were purely about internal organization they could have effectively reorganized Google in the same way without making Alphabet (although I'm not an executive so I could certainly be missing something here).
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<a href="http://www.hooli.xyz/" target="_blank" class="hidden-link">.</a>
Alphabet is only missing a startup accelerator, why wouldn't Sergey and Larry now focus on earlier stage themselves? All those ambitious things can be achieved better by a lot of startupa competing in parallel.
One thing I've heard is that this would help them in terms of taxes, allowing them to write off projects that don't make money, although I'm not entirely clear on how Alphabet would accomplish this.
That would be no joke if that was a reason to do it.
The first thing I thought of involved the regulations and other troubles that Google was facing in the EU. Those troubles seemed to summarize as "Google is too big and is taking advantage of its large market share". Alphabet looks like it'll fracture the google businesses more, which might help reduce the issues they're facing in the EU.
Well, Google is already quite fractured in the EU - it has something like 20 subsidiaries, one in most EU countries[0] ?
That is also a common (mandatory?) setup, for multinational companies to have a local subsidiary in every country where they operate. I guess institutions like the EU must be handle that and focus on the activity independently of the fine details of the company structure, so that the restructuring would not really help or hinder.
>> The first thing I thought of involved the regulations and other troubles that Google was facing in the EU. Those troubles seemed to summarize as "Google is too big and is taking advantage of its large market share". Alphabet looks like it'll fracture the google businesses more, which might help reduce the issues they're facing in the EU.
> Well, Google is already quite fractured in the EU - it has something like 20 subsidiaries, one in most EU countries
Seperation at the marketing end for ad services, or for purposes of tax optimisation, does not really alleviate any of the antitrust concerns. It's the services that matter. Google's main ad business and search being in the same company for example.
So the current EU subsidiaries would not have an effect on the EU investigation, but this current plan might.
IANAL, but it seems unlikely. The Alphabet move doesn't appear to be splitting out the components the EU regulators appear to care about (search, ads, maps) from each other. If regulators are concerned about the effects of personal information consolidation, that's not changing.
Hooli XYZ is a reference to the HBO show Silicon Valley. It has no relation to Google (other than that Hooli is basically a fictional parody of Google). Looks like some developer added that to this press release as an easter egg.
I feel Google shouldn't stop trying to pretend they are still cool hype startup, that just come up as fake. I also feel from a PR perspective it might in fact hurt their image.
I like when random people try to pretend that they've defined cool, who has it, and what constraints it puts on their behavior.
EDIT: hartator disingenuously changed the content of his comment to be more measured. The original comment was "I like when Google tries to pretend they're still cool".
Yaa, $1 for a domain like hooli.xyz or Google, I mean Alphabet ( https://abc.xyz ). I'll try it out.
Just snapped up prefi.xyz, suffi.xyz, picka.xyz, icebo.xyz, equino.xyz, mailbo.xyz, postbo.xyz, rolode.xyz, soapbo.xyz, toolbo.xyz, lunchbo.xyz, letterbo.xyz, chatterbo.xyz for about $15 total for all of them.
I skipped on conve.xyz, laryn.xyz, proli.xyz, and surta.xyz, which were all open a few minutes ago.
Thankfully the proliferation of gTLDs is increasing the supply and lowering the value for squatters like you. You screwed up in 1996, and you're screwing up again now, but hey, it's your money.
The rich boys are speculating on everything. I don't see anything wrong with poor boys taking a chance on an domain name? Yes--I don't like squatting, but when you have huge companies buying up huge blocks of names; I actually encourage the little guy to buy a few, and hope?
The rich boys always seem to get the best names first?
(I do wish when domains expired, the domain company wouldn't have first shot at buying the expired domain? Why are they allowed to do this? It doesn't seem fair? Maybe, I got the protocol wrong?)
More of a loophole maybe than hiding. Like perhaps being one big company in the US, but somehow being "separate" companies that "don't collaborate" in the EU?
There's other suggestions as to why, either to prevent experiments from tarnishing Google's brand, or to ensure Google's separate products can survive the eventual failure of the ad market.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadI think this is more about changing what Larry and Sergey do all day.
The announcement seems deliberately vague. You're right in that it doesn't specifically address the EU concerns, but it creates a structure where that's easier to do.
It prepares you, in terms of financial visibility, experience, etc, if the most painful of anti-trust remedies (breakup) ever happens. AT&T, for example, would have likely proposed different terms for their breakup if they had better visibility into how Western Electric would have performed on its own.
It provides more public financial visibility into some areas of concern, early. For example, it looks like Google fiber isn't staying with Google. Google fiber is probably a concern for at least US anti-trust regulators.
The only companies exiting from Googles purview are Calico, Nest, Fiber, Ventures, Capital,and X. None of which were likely candidates for antitrust prosecution.
This is in line with their prior strategery of continually maneuvering towards "give us more authority but no responsibility."
"Under the new operating structure, its main Google business will include search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure (the “Google business”)"
I don't know much about trading, but look at that "after hours" spike! http://postimg.org/image/ho5ecyr99/
EDIT: All google subsidiaries are now subsidiaries of a conglomerated called Alphabet. Google is a subsidiary too. Google stock will now be Alphabet stock.
Google seems to like competing against themselves, so I'm not sure that's something that they are particularly worried about.
Look at Blackberry, they had an internal project working against the rest of the company (namely Android on Blackberry hardware) that could, had it been allowed, saved the company. Instead Blackberry are either going to be purchased OR go bankrupt.
Honestly internal competition is an argument for doing something like this, not against it.
The company appears to still be alive and still has a few billion dollars in the bank despite now years of people saying that they're going bankrupt. I wish I was 'going bankrupt' like Blackberry.
Blackberry seems to have secured a solid niche position in mobile security, despite losing the majority of their mobile phone business to more end-consumer electronics driven companies (primarily samsung & apple).
The big news is that Larry and Sergey are stepping back into a more Warren and Charlie kind of role, and Sundar Pichai is taking over as CEO of Google.
My question is, what does "slimmed down" Google mean?
It looks like they're taking all the experimental research stuff out of Google and making them direct subsidiaries of Alphabet instead, particularly projects that aren't directly related to the Internet.
The article talked about Life Sciences and Calico, and I have to wonder if other stuff like the self-driving cars are going to become direct Alphabet subsidiaries as well (then again, maybe not: I assume the self-driving cars are tied closely to Google Maps).
A more focused company that's moving to the top level of this hierarchy is Nest.
Presumably they hope that something outside of the new google division will blow up and make the divisions a bit less lopsided.
I have no reason to suspect this, that's just how I usually interpret wording like that.
It means Google minus all the parts that are now their own direct subsidiaries of Alphabet.
Which, previously, were all part of Google. Hence, "slimmed down".
It's going to remove the 'is this a thing Google should be getting in to?' question when evaling ventures/acquisitions.
Hopefully less likely to run afoul of antitrust regulation.
It's a twist on "adult supervision". They have put an adult in charge of making money. Meanwhile, Larry and Sergey get to keep playing around with all sorts of exotic projects that may or may not eventually make money.
IOW, Nest reports to Alphabet, and so does Google. Both are aligned, but separate.
So long as Sergey and Larry (& Co.) keep from micro-managing, I think this structure will be enormously beneficial. I can't see how someone running Google's web properties would be able to move quickly when also having a hands-on responsibility for developing a self-driving car and a glucose-sensing contact lens.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/27/european-p...
> The European parliament has approved a motion calling for tougher regulation of internet search, including suggesting breaking up Google as a solution to its dominance in Europe.
That certainly wasn't a done deal nor even agreed that's what the commission would really aim for, but the heat was mounting and Google's move cut them short just in case.
UPDATE: Hm. Judging by downvotes, some folks here liked the fact that he killed XMPP federation of Google Talk and didn't propose Hangouts as an alternative open protocol. What an achievement.
Appointing Sundar as CEO also allows them to focus more on the cool stuff in Alphabet and let Sundar run the meat and potatoes Google operations. Interesting moves.
But what makes this hard to believe is that they actually called it Alphabet, Inc. It has got to be april fools!
Actually no you can't, I just bought it. :-)
I think it will streamline the management of all of these different businesses, at least make it clear where Larry and Sergey are focusing their efforts.
If we are to include less ambitious stuff, Google Video, Orkut, Chromebooks (never went far), Reader, Google Code, Dart, nothing much came out of Morotola, etc.
And let's see were those "self driving cars" will go, market-wise...
It's around 5-6 million units sold anually, but, as Google themselves said, Google don't make any money of off them.
Samsung, Acer, etc, who produce the units do, but again, in total it represents a tiny slither of laptop profits due to the small margins. Most Chromebooks (70%) go to the education market as cheapo laptops.
They suffer from the gulf state problem where they make so much money from one thing that nothing else will ever be important enough to really be successful.
E.g. with all the billions developing Android, buying Motorola etc, they still make the large majority of mobile ad money on iOS devices!
Edit: Also, in the past Google would pay Firefox to have its users use Google as the default search engine and Google gets the equivalent of this for free with each Chromebook sold.
It's 2015 and companies compete for user timeshare, not dollars.
Dart and Chromebooks failures? Since when
And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no money at all for Google, and all constrained to the niche educational market (schools buying them for their students).
Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :)
There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.
A modern GC is a large, complex beast. Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. all have their own implementations of them, and those implementations are specific to the semantics of those languages. (For example, Python's early finalizers. Ruby's FFI, etc.) That's a big blob of code for you to push down the wire with your application every time the user hits your site.
Also, that GC doesn't know how to play nice with the browser's own GC. If you have an event handler that has a reference to some Ruby object that in turn has a reference to some DOM node, neither GC can trace through that path and tell when those objects can be collected. That means you get memory leaks.
On top of that, the language implementation itself is large. The Python executable on my machine is 2 MB. Do you want to add another 2 MB to your app? Is Python enough better than JS to justify forcing all of your users on their crappy mobile networks to download that before any interactivity begins on your page? What about when you start using the additional 45 MB of standard library that comes with Python?
Also, how do you make those standard libraries work in a browser? Who is going to rewrite them all to stop using the native OS libraries they currently use and instead rely on APIs that are available in JS?
That's not to say this is an insurmountable problem. But my belief is that it's a big enough headache to outweigh the benefits you would get from writing your app in another higher level language.
Now, if your language can compile to JavaScript and has a decently small runtime library, that's a different story. At that point, you're back to only one GC and relatively little overhead for your language's semantics and core libraries. It means you don't have to worry about a large existing standard library that #includes everything under the sun.
This is why I think CoffeeScript, ClojureScript, Dart, etc. are feasible. But I don't think anyone will be writing web apps in Ruby or Python anytime soon. Languages that look syntactically similar to them (Opal, Red, Pyjamas, Brython, etc.), sure. But the real deal where you can have some app that does, I don't know, "import requests" and have it actually work in a shippably-sized web app? I think that's going to be a much harder path.
It's a great goal for the WebAssembly folks to work towards, but it's an aspirational goal.
Actually that's part of the whole point of WebAssembly -- as Eich put it. It's not just to speedup emscripten style ports of C/C++ programs.
Eich's words: "Bottom line: with co-evolution of JS and wasm, in a few years I believe all the top browsers will sport JS engines that have become truly polyglot virtual machines".
E.g. you can open a web application selling $10 for $5 today and I guarantee you it's gonna be a huge success.
Orkut was wildly successful in Brazil and India, until they stopped building it for Buzz and Plus
Reader was hugely successful, which is why the outcry on its closing
Chromebooks are doing great, atleast on Amazon, the world's biggest retailer.
Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive
Motorola streamlined it's product lineup under Google and is doing fairly okay for Lenovo
Calling above items as failure is inaccurate. None of them were moonshots btw.
Dart started as a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development with a long-term plan that compile-to-JS might not be necessary on the web.
And its still a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development use.
Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed.
The rest I would agree with.
Is it?
> By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine
If everything is a moonshot, nothing is, etc.
AFAIK both projects were just 20% time projects scaled up to three or four people[1]. A "moonshot" is obviously a wishy-washy term, but opportunity for success doesn't seem to be sufficient to call something that.
[1] http://massless.org/?archive=2007/05/about-google-readers-bi...
Yes. They first used the word when referring to Andy Rubin's departure from Android.
Umm, no. Reader was not hugely successful. Users loved the idea of using Reader but they did not actually use it.
If you are Google that reads as "Orkut only got traction in Brazil and India, hence failure". Maybe they could have sold it to some smaller company, but they tried to move the customers to their other services instead.
Reader was very popular relative to the size of the RSS reader market.
Google bought Motorola for the patent portfolio and sold off the rest, so I'm not sure how that was a failure. Motorola also turned around their mobile division with the Moto X under Google (over 100% increase in mobile sales due to the Moto X and company line of products)
I remember Orkut being very popular in Asia for a while.
I dont see how G closing down reader could have that count in the success column, especially considering how much bad blood it bred for G (and how little effort it would have likely meant to maintain it.)
It would be a good thing explain why the downvotes
BTW, the best result of wave is hackpad, IMHO.
Plus was intended to eat Facebook's lunch.
They were both huge moonshots.
Unfortunately, they used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) for the rockets.
I don't think it hurt the consumer reputation, and it can't be about the investor reputation, since those things are still inside the entity (Alphabet) that investors will care about (at least, until a way to invest in the new "core" Google directly is offered, which may be part of the long-term plan -- it would explain why they indicated that they will report Google's financials separately within Alphabet's.)
It used to be you were investing in a search/ad company that owned a lot of other stuff. Now you are investing in a company that owns the leading search/ad company.
The difference is obviously academic but I think it will make a difference in how the shares are traded. Perception drives the market after all.
So many people keep saying their biggest fear of google is that they will turn devices like Google Glass, or the Google car into products to collect information on people. When those products themselves are viable business models.
- Google will now be operated as a subsidiary of a new company called Alphabet.
- Alphabet will be publicly traded under the same symbols as Google is now traded.
- Stock will just transfer as-is.
- Sundar Pichai is now the CEO of Google.
- Larry and Sergey will run Alphabet as CEO and President, respectively.
* What was called "Google" will now be called "Alphabet", with Larry and Sergey as CEO and President.
* Much of the core business of the old Google will be operated in a division/subsidiary of the new Alphabet called "Google", of which Sundar Pichai will be CEO.
* The rest of the old Google's business will be in other units of Alphabet.
I find it easier to think of it as a name change and the creation of a new subordinate entity within the old organization with its own CEO than to think of it as creating a new entity above Google, and transferring lots of functions from Google to the new superior entity, transferring all stock in Google to stock in the new superior entity, and changing the leadership of Google.
Obviously s/class/company/g modulo plurals...
* Alphabet has-one Google * Google belongs-to Alphabet * YouTube belongs-to Google * Google X belongs-to Alphabet
I have very fond memories of early Google.com, and there always used to be a vivid spirit in their products that everything was so experimental and technically on the edge. That feeling has been gone for a very long time, but since Larry has come back it's been slowly returning. Call me what you want, but I feel like this is such a smart move for the founders' freedom to explore.
And the way they announced it is totally in line with the spirit. I'm sure there was a lot of technical work, and will be more, but they way it's all hidden in the back so that they can focus on the most important parts. I'm a fan.
I can't recall this sort of thing happening in my lifetime, so it will be really interesting to see how this plays out. I also wonder how this would be treated if Google didn't have the crazy corporate structure they have now (where public shares are essentially non-equity and non-voting).
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/the-many-classe...
Edit: I am reasonably certain this is a tax and liability optimization strategy. It allows their more risky units to operate with separate liability from their cash cow.
Edit 2: I'm actually surprised the stock value hasn't tanked because most of the future potential of Google just got moved outside of the company. How much of Google's future value was based on X? I would say a non-trivial amount of the stock price is the anticipation of future profits, which are now no longer a part of the company the stock is intended to index.
Edit 3: Disregard Edit 2, I misread the release the second time through and assumed X was not part of the company :).
The price of Google's stock is based on forward-looking prospects, not on current metrics.
About the only thing this changes is that ex-Google is now explicitly acknowledging to the public markets what everyone already knew: it's a conglomerate, only unlike other conglomerates, it has only a single viable business.
Yawn.
they did nothing to create the algorithm, what right do they have to whine?
Berkshire is composed of pre-existing businesses that were themselves successful before being purchased. They are not experimental ventures that need to be subsidized. It is exactly the opposite: money is plowed into the strongest businesses. They each generate excess cash, and it is easier to reinvest that cash in some places than others. The conglomerate structure makes it possible to put the cash where it gets the best returns without having to pay taxes or transaction fees.
Alphabet has none of these properties, except the ability to allocate capital tax-free, but they already had that as Google.
They may benefit from the firehose, but were already self-sufficient without it.
That’s in stark contrast to the Google/Alphabet model, where there’s no way driverless cars could exist independent of the adwords firehose.
It’s waaaay more speculative. On the order of VC investing. Rather than Berkshire’s value investing.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
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<a href="http://www.hooli.xyz/" target="_blank" class="hidden-link">.</a>
Are we sure it isn't April 1st? Are we sure this press release isn't a hoax?
This is so wild I'm having trouble believing any of it.
W is for Wing
X is for X Lab
Y is for ...
Btw, i was thinking Amazon A2Z was doing this virtually.
That would be no joke if that was a reason to do it.
Either way, WOW!
But that's just my best guess
That is also a common (mandatory?) setup, for multinational companies to have a local subsidiary in every country where they operate. I guess institutions like the EU must be handle that and focus on the activity independently of the fine details of the company structure, so that the restructuring would not really help or hinder.
[0] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125070...
Seperation at the marketing end for ad services, or for purposes of tax optimisation, does not really alleviate any of the antitrust concerns. It's the services that matter. Google's main ad business and search being in the same company for example.
So the current EU subsidiaries would not have an effect on the EU investigation, but this current plan might.
It's up 5.88% (or $26bn) in after hours trading.
EDIT: hartator disingenuously changed the content of his comment to be more measured. The original comment was "I like when Google tries to pretend they're still cool".
https://abc.xyz/jobs -> https://abc.xyz/about/careers/
edit: The easter egg is on abc.xyz not the blogspot announcement.
Just snapped up prefi.xyz, suffi.xyz, picka.xyz, icebo.xyz, equino.xyz, mailbo.xyz, postbo.xyz, rolode.xyz, soapbo.xyz, toolbo.xyz, lunchbo.xyz, letterbo.xyz, chatterbo.xyz for about $15 total for all of them.
I skipped on conve.xyz, laryn.xyz, proli.xyz, and surta.xyz, which were all open a few minutes ago.
Thank you!
I sent in a registration for proof.com on February 3, 1996, but missed out on it by a few hours to some other dude. Never again!
Just snapped up remar.xyz, networ.xyz, noteboo.xyz, payche.xyz and a few more.
Went on a geometry/graphics kick and snapped up stuff like plotting.xyz and intercepts.xyz as well.
I don't make the rules, I just play by them.
We all make the rules.
The rich boys always seem to get the best names first?
(I do wish when domains expired, the domain company wouldn't have first shot at buying the expired domain? Why are they allowed to do this? It doesn't seem fair? Maybe, I got the protocol wrong?)
http://www.hooli.xyz/#inspiration
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages
This is the most traditional-corporation definitely-evil move Google has ever made, whether their letter claims otherwise or not.
The idea that they're "hiding" from the EU crackdown is ridiculous. They know perfectly well it doesn't work like that.
There's other suggestions as to why, either to prevent experiments from tarnishing Google's brand, or to ensure Google's separate products can survive the eventual failure of the ad market.