Among Alphabet's innovative R & D subsidiaries, as some business failures are closed, some promising companies introduce external companies for independent development, and some companies that have a close relationship with Google's internal business are absorbed and reorganized. Is it necessary for Google to establish An independent "Alphabet holding company" to package these R & D operations may require a question mark.
A few years ago, the United States Google Corporation restructured and re-established a holding company called "Alphabet". In addition to Google, Alphabet mainly includes some innovative research and development companies that develop future businesses. The emergence of Alphabet has also caused some confusion among the general public about Google's perception, and the media have to distinguish between Alphabet and Google.
According to the latest foreign media news, with Pichai as CEO of Alphabet and Google, there have been some obvious changes in the company. Recently, another Alphabet subsidiary was absorbed into Google. An American authoritative media said that these actions made the outside world question the future of Alphabet (if necessary).
Why the architecture is reorganizing
Why did Google suddenly become Alphabet? This comes mainly from Google's innovative R & D business.
As we all know, Google is a company with a strong technology and engineer culture. In addition to traditional businesses, the two founders of Page and Brin focus on various future projects, such as autonomous driving, life sciences, drones, satellite communications, Robots and more. Google has entered these innovative R & D fields through a large number of mergers and acquisitions and talent recruitment. These departments are also known as Google's "bet business."
However, Google's continued investment and opacity in the area of innovation and research has raised concerns among Wall Street analysts and affected Google's stock price. Investors also don't know which Google's innovative research and development projects have future prospects, and which projects consume a lot of funds.
To reassure Wall Street analysts. Google restructured the company structure, newly established a holding company Alphabet, and arranged all its innovative R & D business in Alphabet. At the same time, Google continued to exist, retaining the company's pillar businesses that can earn real money, such as Web searches, online advertising, YouTube video sites, Android operating systems, and more.
However, Alphabet's innovative business is still difficult to get rid of outside doubts, many projects are progressing very slowly, and no hope of success can be seen. Investors believe that Alphabet should not continue to throw money at projects without hope.
Absorb again
According to foreign media reports, recently, Alphabet's subsidiary Jigsaw has been merged into Google. The company is committed to solving global security challenges through technology.
The company was founded in 2010 by Eric Schmidt, a former Google CEO (later chairman), who used the name "Google Creative". In 2016, Jigsaw left Google and became a subsidiary of Alphabet.
The company's existing products mainly address issues such as online information review, crackdown on fake news, crackdown on online sexual harassment, and extremism.
The company said in a self-introduction: "Our world has so much Internet content, and the risks of digital security have never been higher. We are working hard to find new problems that threaten our society-from the review and harassment of online information to false Information and violent extremism. Through field research and cooperation, we strive to find new solutions to make everyone safer. "
The company's best-known free service is the Shield Project, which protects news publications, civil society, election surveillance, and political campaign sites from distributed denial-of-service attacks by cyber hackers by leveraging Google's global infrastructure.
The company also provides tools for people to identify fake pictures.
According to reports, Jigsaw has quietly moved from Alphabet to Google in the past month, and it still operates as an independent unit, with daily operations unaffected.
Jigsaw CEO Jared Cohen-formerly in the US State Department's policy work-now reports to Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs. In addition, it may be the smallest Google subsidiary with about 60 employees.
Previous merger
Jigsaw is not the first time Google has absorbed a subsidiary of Alphabet.
In early 2018, Nest, an independent company specializing in the development of smart home products (acquired from the outside for $ 3.2 billion, which is the second largest acquisition in Google's history) was merged into Google and joined Google's hardware division.
It is well known that after the sale of Motorola Mobile to Lenovo Group, Google has developed a strong interest in the hardware business. Google spent $ 1 billion to acquire the mobile phone foundry business of Chinese smartphone maker HTC, and gained 2,000 outstanding engineers.
In the past few years, Google's hardware products have been increasing, such as smartphones, smart speakers, laptops, set-top boxes (including video sticks) and other products. These hardwares have also become some of Google 's Internet services (especially Google Assistant). Landing channels have promoted Google's core network services.
In addition, in 2019, Alphabet's cyber security subsidiary Chronicle also joined Google's cloud computing business.
In the emerging cloud computing market, Google is far behind leading companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, and its market share is only a fraction of them, which makes Google quite awkward. According to foreign media reports, Google has set ambitious goals to enter the world's top two cloud computing markets within a few years, that is, it must exceed Microsoft.
Recently, Google is also enhancing the product line and competitiveness of its cloud computing business through various acquisition transactions.
New officer
At the end of last year, Alphabet made major personnel adjustments. The two founders, Page and Brin, who have long been separated from the actual management of the company, resigned from the positions of CEO and president of Alphabet respectively. In the future, Google CEO Pichai He is also the CEO of Alphabet.
Since Pichai led Alphabet and Google, there have been some significant changes.
For example, recently, Alphabet announced the fourth quarter of last year's financial report. As the first time in history, the company announced detailed operating data of two important sub-businesses of Google-YouTube online video and cloud computing, which has been widely accepted by Wall Street analysts. Welcome, and consider an important step in management transparency.
Of course, some analysts are not satisfied. Some indicators of YouTube and cloud computing business lag behind competitors. The analyst hopes that Pichai will release key indicators such as profit margin in the future.
In addition, Google 's image has plummeted in the past year or two. In addition to following Facebook 's countless scandals that violated personal privacy, various negative news also appeared within the company. Employees are dissatisfied with management and some policies (such as Rubin, the father of the Android system who received the scandal, received a $ 90 million termination compensation). There have been many strikes and the company is losing the trust of employees.
Recently, Google has also begun investing more resources in investigating high-ranking sex scandals. In addition, according to the latest news from foreign media, Google 's human resources leader has been confirmed to be removed from the job because employees are strongly dissatisfied with the human resources department 's inaction on sexual harassment complaints.
Is Alphabet cancelled?
Alphabet's innovative R & D department has become a burden for the company. In the past, Alphabet has closed down several failed R & D operations, such as satellite Internet plans and robotics (Alphabet has sold several acquired robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics, a well-known online company).
Recently, Pichai said in an interview with foreign media that for these innovative R & D businesses, Google will take a similar approach to the life sciences business, that is, let them further operate independently, at the same time let external companies take shares, and at the same time take Stricter audits.
After Pichai became the head of Alphabet, industry insiders analyzed that Pichai could gradually absorb Alphabet's subsidiaries into Google.
It is obvious that among Alphabet's innovative R & D subsidiaries, as some business failures are closed, some promising companies introduce external companies to develop independently, and some companies that have a close relationship with Google's internal business are absorbed and reorganized. It is also necessary to set up an independent "Alphabet Holding Company" to package these R & D operations, which may need to be marked with a question mark.
that's true!
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