WTF Google Just Changed Its Name To Alphabet?

Google

One of the largest, most well-known tech companies in the world is changing its household name.

Google, and it appears this isn’t one of the April Fools’ prank they love to play, will now be known as Alphabet. From a post by CEO Larry Page:

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Our two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.

Google has changed tremendously in the 16 years it has been around, growing from a minuscule internet search engine to the polylithic corporation it is to day, one whose focus is as broad as self-driving cars and internet delivery drones. This change will help them manage all that under one umbrella.

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). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.

Google the search engine, it appears, will still be known as Google. As for why Alphabet, it wasn’t pomposity at all.

For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google — the birth of Alphabet. We liked the name Alphabet because it means 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!

Well there you have it. You can read the whole announcement here.