Google has restructured to create a new holding company called Alphabet, separating its core web advertising business from newer ventures like driverless cars.
The planned structure resembles that employed by General Electric, with a central unit handling corporate-wide activities such as finance and relatively independent business units focused on specific areas.
Analysts have interpreted the move as an attempt to focus on some of its more ambitious projects in areas such as wearable devices, driverless cars, home automation and Internet connectivity.
The irony of this somewhat underwhelming announcement (it must be August for this to be such big news) is that one of the world’s biggest Web companies and technological tastemakers and leaders failed to check whether (a) the domain name Alphabet.com was available (it isn’t) and that the Twitter handle @Alphabet was available (it isn’t).
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Engineering & Technology magazine 