By now, you’ve likely heard the news – after all, everyone’s been talking about it. Google’s been bitten by the reorganization bug and announced that it will operate under a parent company known as Alphabet.
I know, I know, reorgs don’t exactly have the best reputation in the business world, and they’re often the result of a business that’s either seeking a way to revitalise or lacks any sort of meaningful direction.
Google operates the world’s largest search engine. It also owns the most successful video sharing site globally. Furthermore, Google developed the most successful mobile OS worldwide. Therefore, at first glance, Google perfectly exemplifies brand superiority.
So…why reorganize, then?
The first thing to understand about this reorganization is that it’s far from a radical one. Google will still exist as we know it, retaining its Search, Maps, Android, YouTube and advertising businesses.
What will change is that Google will become one of several child companies alongside businesses such as Life Sciences and Calico.
The restructuring also meant Google CEO Larry Page became Alphabet’s CEO. Additionally, Page’s Co-founder, Sergey Brin, stepped into the president role. Furthermore, Eric Schmidt took on the position of executive chairman.
Sunder Pichai will become the new CEO of Google. So….aside from a few of Google’s former departments branching out as their own companies, how exactly does this change anything?
“What you thought of as Google will just be one division inside of alphabet,” explains Josh Constine of TechCrunch. “The crazy moonshot science experiments within Google will each become their own Alphabet with their own CEOs.”
According to Constine, there are three reasons for this:
- Larry Page wants to focus more on Google’s ambitions:
- It lets Google focus less on maintaining its core business and more on other, more exciting ventures: The current Google is mostly about its search engine. While profitable, this overshadows its other projects. Remember that orbital elevator? Now, each company division can focus better. They won’t have search affecting everything.
- It helps attract and retain talent: Many of Google’s best people moved from its main businesses. They went to things like Google X or the robotics team. Now, these talented individuals are more likely to stay. This is because they have the chance to become CEOs themselves. They can also gain much more visibility than they would have under the Google brand.
So…basically this is as much a restructuring as a rebranding. Google hopes that by rearranging its business, it’ll be able to make each of its core departments even better at what they do best.
It’s tough to say how all this is going to play out in the future, of course…but for now, it’s time to start calling the largest company in tech by a different name.
