Can you spell Google? Well, you better start with the letter “A” as of Friday afternoon as Google Inc. announced its reorganization into a holding company named Alphabet Inc. will occur following the close of trading on Friday. The tech titan made the move to boost the profitability of its main online advertising businesses and at the same time giving new projects more room to expand.
According to Friday’s press release, Google’s Class A and C stock will begin trading as Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and Alphabet Class A Common Stock, respectively, on the Nasdaq global index on Monday. However, the legal restructuring will not change the ticker symbols, which will remain GOOG and GOOGL. The company noted that all shareholder rights also remain unchanged.
Details on Google changing name to Alphabet
The new Google will be the online advertising businesses including Search, Android and YouTube, and will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. The firm’s other initiatives will be set up under Alphabet, including health-care units Google Life Sciences and Calico, Sidewalk Labs, Nest, Google Ventures, Google Capital and the research lab Google X.
Co-Founder Larry Page said he believes the restructuring will “turbocharge” the firm’s efforts, especially in the health care and transportation sectors. Company sources say the autonomy given to execs at the Nest connected home division is likely to be the norm for the new businesses under the Alphabet umbrella.
Analysts have noted that one major benefit of the move to Alphabet will be more insight into all of Google’s operations and greater transparency in company finances. As recently reported by ValueWalk, Wall Street has been supportive of the change in corporate structure, and a number of analysts have recently announced upgrades on Google relating to the move.
New structure might offer additional legal protections
Legal analysts have also pointed out that the new holding company structure serves to further isolate the online advertising and search businesses, which are facing major legal challenges all across the globe, from the other more research-oriented divisions of the firm.
Experts say Google’s move is a good example of how separating legal liability and building “firewalls” is a big part of business planning for multinationals today.
