Revolution in the house Google. The Mountain View giant has announced the birth of A, a new company that will contain all of the group's assets, including the search engine, YouTube, Google Maps, the Calico (dedicated to longevity research) and Life Science (dedicated to health) divisions.
“We believe this will give us more agency at a managerial level, as we can independently manage things that are not very connected,” he wrote. Larry Page, CEO of the new group, in the post published on the company's blog. The other founder of Google, Sergey Brin, will instead be president of Alphabet. Sundar Pichai, who was senior vice president of Google, will become CEO of the search engine and all related businesses, including YouTube.
With these changes, Google acquires a structure similar to that of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet's holding company under which dozens of companies belonging to different sectors are managed, from the railway industry to clothing with Fruit of the Loom.
Page also explained the reason for choosing the name Alphabet: "It's a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and it's the core of how we index searches with Google."
The Google will become Alphabet on the stock exchange, but nothing will change for the shares, which will continue to trade under the ticker Googl (for class A shares) and Goog (for class C shares).
The news caused Alphabet's A shares to breach after market (+5%, touching $700). The leap allowed Google to increase its market capitalization by about $20 billion. Previously, the stock on Wall Street closed down slightly (-0,19%) at $663,14 per share.
