Why Google is renaming itself "Alphabet"

[Commentary] Google started as a company that built a search engine, but over time it's become a lot more than that. The company has created or acquired a number of other hugely popular internet products, including YouTube, Android, and Gmail. More recently, the company has begun pouring resources into projects like self-driving cars, anti-aging technology, and balloon-powered internet access. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin believe that these projects have become too diverse and sprawling for a single operating company to manage all of them effectively. Different projects require different types of leaders, different company cultures, and different types of resources. So they're creating Alphabet as a holding company that will oversee all of these different ventures while allowing each to have more independence.

"We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes," Page wrote in his blog post announcing the change. "But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant." Page hopes that giving the various parts of the Google empire more autonomy will make it easier for them to stay outside their comfort zones and push the technological envelope.