What You Need To Know About Google's New Alphabet

Time to relearn your ABCs.

Google has just announced a major restructure, introducing a new parent company called Alphabet and moving some of its major names around in manner that hints at their plans for success (/world domination).

Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, will become the Alphabet CEO, while his fellow co-founder Sergey Brin is to take the role of Alphabet President. It might sound like a learning segment from Sesame Street, but the moves indicate that Google is no longer a company that does "internet stuff and a lot of other things". 

Alphabet is to act as a holding company, which will allow Google to focus on its internet operations: search, YouTube, Chrome, Android, Google Now, Google Photos and Google Maps will now be looked after by the new Google boss, 43-year-old Sundar Pichai.

The experiment X labs (see the alphabet label kicking in?), who've previously worked on Google Glass and self-driving cars, will now become their own entity, continuing their tests of drones and clever vehicles. The Ventures and Capital arm of Google will also be able to expand and do "its own thing" under the new Alphabet structure.

"For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google—the birth of Alphabet," explains Page. "We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search!... I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products—the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands."

So Google, the internet company that used to do lots, now just does internet stuff, whilst Alphabet is free to stretch its many letters into many alpha-pies. 

We give it a month before new tax-dodging allegations and political complications start lining up like one, two, three.