The People Behind Google’s New ‘Alphabet’ brand [@SmartInsights alert]

You will know about Brin and Page, but perhaps not Sundar Pichai and Matt Serlin...

Importance to Digital Marketers: [rating=5]

Recommended link: Official Google Blog announcement of Alphabet

Is 'Alphabet' 'for real'?!

Well, you might have thought that Google had grown so well established and large, that it had lost the capacity to surprise. Not so! It surprised me with the announcement this week of Alphabet. In fact, I had to check it wasn't one of those April fool PR efforts with the stunning, but curious new brand and domain name of  Alphabet (http://abc.xyz).

So I headed straight to the ICANN WHOIS domain registration database and learnt that there is a San Francisco connection, Although Matt Serlin (the main registrant is nothing to do with Google), but he is part of Mark Monitor which is a domain management organisation, but if you take a look at the Name Servers than Google is most definitely the owner!

I was also interested to see the domain creation date which was 20th March 2014 so we can get an idea of how long Google has been planning this...

You probably heard on the mainstream media that Google is now forming a new operating company Alphabet. If you check out the announcement on the official Google blog, then you can see the reasoning behind this. Forming a separate company Alphabet enables Google's founders Larry Page (who is running the business as the CEO) alongside Sergey Brin (acting as President) to pursue their personal and commercial interests beyond the relative narrow Google's vision statement to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" to wider interests like renewable energy and self-driving cars you may have heard about.

This is the way Sergey and Brin explain Alphabet

What is Alphabet?

Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.

Given this, the move makes perfect sense, it enables Google as the largest part of Alphabet to focus on its vision and satisfying its shareholders, while being less associated with failed attempts to innovate which are inevitable with cutting edge products and services (Google Glass Anyone?).

Implications of the move to Alphabet for Digital Marketers?

Apparently, there are no immediate implications for digital marketing strategists and practitioners who need to follow everything that Google says and does very carefully. But there is a need to follow more closely what Sundar Pichai is saying - he is now the new CEO as explained deeper in the announcement:

"A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google.

Unfortunately he's not that active on Google+ or Twitter so far - mainly retweets, so it looks like we will have to wait for controlled investor briefings.

If you want to know more, this Quora question What did Sundar Pichai do, that his peers didn't do, that got him promoted up to the highest ranks at Google? helps explains his background.

Surprisingly his background isn't within the core Search or YouTube products, but in Google Chrome and Toolbar, but he has clearly been effective in building and managing teams and implementing products. But this background does suggest to me that Page and Brin will remain hands-on with Google when it comes to strategic decisions and vision at Google - as you would expect!