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G is for Google

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: G is for Google

#321

Post by staunch »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #232
staunch wrote: post #165

The Google Guys are now VCs.

cough gv.com cough This is not venture capital.

Larry and Sergey never had anything to do with Google Ventures. It was intentionally kept separate and managed by Bill Maris. It operates on a $100m+ a year fund.

Alphabet, Inc will be operated by the two Google Guys with billions in funding.

> We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We'll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation.

They're venture capitalists in all but name.

Re: G is for Google

#322

Post by stephen »

misterbwong wrote: post #185

This sounds a lot like Berkshire Hathaway's structure. Buffet + Munger at the top, mostly as advisers and fund managers, with individual companies given autonomy. I like it but it all depends on whether Larry & Sergey can hire well.

I was thinking the same thing; the difference is that Buffet & Munger bought existing companies that were already financially strong/had proven business models, and tried to leave their existing management (with a proven track record in that industry) in place.

This seems more like Sergey & Brin going to play in non-Google industries with unproven business models that they are experimenting in. (I'm likely being very naive & unfair; obviously they're very smart and wouldn't do this on a whim.)

Either way, Alphabet definitely sounds fun. It will be interesting to see how it works out.

Re: G is for Google

#323

Post by scott_karana »

citruspi wrote: post #307
scott_karana wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think spitfire was being sarcastic, eg, "nobody looks for tech businesses in annual piles of irrelevant paper anymore"

Yeah. I thought so too, but I wasn't sure, so I figured I might as well answer. It couldn't hurt.

It was very polite of you. :-)

Re: G is for Google

#324

Post by edpichler »

I did not like the name, it remembers me the Amazon original copy (from A to Z).

But I like Google company, really well administrated, it's easy to see on the annual release reports. Despite the not so good name, they are doing a great job and the right next step.

Re: G is for Google

#325

Post by scott_karana »

bsimpson wrote: post #304
scott_karana wrote: post #99

I'm really confused why they wouldn't chose to incorporate a "new Google", and split out all its other ventures, future and existing , as subsidiaries, rather than make a new brand and relegate their previously mainone to subsidiary status, with its own sub-subsidiaries. Legal issues, I presume? Or are Brin and Page just having identity crises? I don't think anyone will care if they see "Foobar, an Alphabet company"…

Are there any prominent ventures (aside from YouTube) that aren't being spun out?

The self-driving cars appear to be staying with Google for now.

It would also have been nice to see Drive/Docs/Mail split off from Search/Advertising, but that's definitely a pie in the sky dream on my part ;)

Re: G is for Google

#326

Post by rconti »

jafitc wrote: post #280
igorgue wrote: post #167

They gonna fail cause they don't own the .com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How can I upvote this to heaven? Made my day :-) I could write that I spilled my coffee, except I don't drink coffee.

On the Internet, nobody knows that your dog doesn't drink coffee.

Re: G is for Google

#327

Post by akhilcacharya »

mehrzad wrote: post #302
shas3 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Yes, that's exactly what I was asking.

Re: G is for Google

#330

Post by JoshTriplett »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #133

Wow, they are doing letters? Really? Letters? Hey is Eric Schmidt still in the building somewhere? Ask him how well Planets worked out for Sun Microsystems. Interesting strategy, hard to second guess from the outside of course. Sun's motivation was to figure out whether the other parts of the company could stand on their own[1], it also makes it less fiscally complicated to discharge an entire group into the void. Th…

For one thing, they're specifically keeping Labs as part of Alphabet directly, rather than as a sub-company. That seems like recognition that experiments shouldn't have to immediately pan out or immediately become self-sustaining.

For another, they've said nothing about how they plan to handle IT and infrastructure. Though that'll certainly be interesting; they'd be foolish not to take advantage of the Google datacenter and cloud services to accelerate new projects, for instance.

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