Google ‘Alphabet’ spells surprise reorganization

San Francisco: Google unveiled a surprise corporate overhaul Monday, forming a new parent company dubbed Alphabet to include Internet search and a handful of independent companies.

Google chief executive Larry Page announced the change, saying he would hold the same title at Alphabet, the new holding company for the tech giant´s newer ventures such as the research arm X Lab, investment unit Google Ventures and health and science operations.

Google will be one of the units, headed by the current company vice president Sundar Pichai.

"Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable," said a statement from Page, who co-founded the tech giant with Sergey Brin 17 years ago.

"So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet. I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as president."

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman at Google, will transition to Alphabet with the same title, Google said.

Page said Alphabet is "mostly a collection of companies," the largest of which is Google.

Under the new structure, "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."

Alphabet will include units focusing on life sciences products, such as a glucose-sensing contact lens, and the health research firm Calico, Page said.

Google X, which handles research on self-driving cars and Internet balloons, will also be a separate unit.

Other units to be separated include the drone delivery project Wing, Google Fiber´s high-speed Internet, the home automation unit Nest and the investment arms of the California technology giant.

"Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren´t very related," he said.