Google is now a wholly owned subsidiary of a new company called "Alphabet", to be run by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Sundar Pichai will be CEO of Google, which will remain focused on its core of web-related products. Alphabet will serve as and umbrella for Google's now quite diverse projects, with a separate CEO for each. By way of example, the announcement cites a Life Sciences group, and a group called Calico which is focused on longevity.
All stock in Google will be converted to Alphabet stock, with the same rights and number of shares.
takyon: The Register, The New York Times, Wired, MarketWatch.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by CyberB0B39 on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:21PM
This is nothing new to corporate America. Each division will have a CEO and the parent holding corporation will have a CEO. As others have mentioned, this isolates risk and would allow divisions to be more easily spun off or purchased in the future. I would expect to see other large divisions within Alphabet to also have a CEO (Youtube, etc.)
For example, GE has a similar structure
GE: http://www.ge.com/pdf/company/ge_organization_chart.pdf [ge.com]