Over the years, Google has gradually developed from a company founded on a brilliant algorithm that gave the world an effective internet search engine. From 1998 onwards, the company has continually developed new products, such as Google Glass in 2013, and has acquired a number of significant innovative services such as Android in 2005 and YouTube in 2006. Some of the lesser known business units that have their origin with Google include GV (Google Ventures), a venture capital investment firm that invests in innovative ideas in fields such as technology, the internet, healthcare and artificial intelligence; Google Capital, a business unit that invests for profit in large established technology companies; Google Fibre, which provides cable television and broadband internet services; Nest Labs, which produces home automation products and was acquired by Google in 2014; and Google Life Sciences, a spinoff company from Google X (Google’s research and development group), which began developing products such as contact lenses for people with diabetes to check their glucose levels non‐intrusively.

Such a wide range of companies associated with an internet search engine does pose challenges for both brand identity and effective operations. Thus, in 2015 Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced the formation of a company called Alphabet. Alphabet is a conglomerate structure formed as a parent for Google and other companies such as GV, Nest Labs and Google Fibre. Some business units changed their name after the restructuring, with Google Life Sciences becoming Verily and Google X becoming X. Larry Page is CEO of Alphabet and Sergey Brin is President.

The new structure allows the internet company ‘Google’ to provide a more focussed approach to its internet services. Similar to the ‘clean’ page characteristic of the Google search engine, the internet company can now be more accountable for its core business, while the other Alphabet companies can focus on their core business. The link to the original Google logo is retained through the name Alphabet, as Google is well known for the creative use of the letters in its logo to reflect seasonal and historical events.

QUESTION

What challenges might the Alphabet and Google teams encounter when creating and navigating the new organisational design?