Google was too big for its own good. Housing everything from its search engine to robots to life-extension technologies in one corporate hierarchy made for a lot of managers. Smart people often loathe such paralyzing bureaucracy. That’s why breaking up the company under the new parent company name, Alphabet, could save Google from itself.
Google today declared its name will now just host its core business. Its other, more far-flung projects like Life Sciences (glucose-measuring contact lenses) and Calico (life extension), will live somewhat independently alongside Google inside the new conglomerate it calls Alphabet.