“Get ready to start calling Google by its new name, Alphabet,” Matt Krantz reports for USA Today.
“The online advertising giant will complete its previously announced corporate transformation after the market closes Friday,” Krantz reports. “That means starting Monday, the company will trade under the name and corporate identity of Alphabet.”
“Alphabet will continue to have two public classes of shares, Class A and Class C, allowing the founders to maintain control even as more shares are doled out,” Krantz reports. “The company used a 2014 stock split as an opportunity to create a Class C of its shares that have no voting rights. The move allows founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page maintain voting control of the company, while enjoying the liquidity of the public markets.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Alphabet Inc. Do know evil.
SEE ALSO:
Google reorganizes under new corporate umbrella Alphabet Inc. – August 10, 2015
‘Alphabet’ sounds like a front company for an evil super-villain in an apocalyptic video game or superhero movie.
Alphabet… what an absolutely stupid, absurd, and geeky name for a company.
Just another move by Larry and Curly to try and maintain control of their geeky company. A company that has no idea how to do consumer hardware and software. From Google+ to their ugly search engine.
Please, Apple, or someone else, do a search engine to put a nail in these asshats’ coffin.
And Google/Alphabet self-driving cars? What a bunch of bullshit. Nobody wants a self-driving car, only geeks do. And the reason is simple: people want to be free, they don’t want to be controlled and constrained. Google has no idea.
Self-driving cars solve no real problem other than stopping drunk and dangerous driving. They also create a host of problems.
And they won’t hit the road for MANY, MANY more years. The development of hardware and software… the safety tests required… the certifications needed for it to be road worthy, etc… all many, many years away.
And when self-driving cars do hit the road, it’ll be mostly niche and vertical markets like taxis in a city or delivery service.
With that said, for these reasons and more, Apple is NOT working on a self-driving car. Forget that. It may have some self-drive feature like Tesla where you can summon your car to you, but even that is not without its problems. Imagine your car in a parkade at a mall and you summon it to you. Imagine zillions of other people standing around you, doing the EXACT SAME THING?
There’d be a long line up of cars and you’d be waiting, and waiting. Let’s get real here…
>And Google/Alphabet self-driving cars? What a bunch of bullshit. Nobody wants a self-driving car, only geeks do. And the reason is simple: people want to be free, they don’t want to be controlled and constrained.
I think you’re not thinking this all the way through. The masses want self-driving cars. Only a few automobile geeks don’t. The majority of people, they might enjoy driving sometimes, but not usually. Nothing fun about driving to walmart, or work, or when you’re tired, or drunk, or sick.
There are many activities people like a lot more than operating an automobile… such as sleeping, reading, texting, playing games, watching tv. Self-driving cars that enable people to do these things on the way to and from work, to and from walmart, to and from grandma’s house, to and from the bars and clubs… these will be the biggest thing to hit the road since the Model T. Everyone will want one, even you.
Few people will ever buy one and own it outright. For the vast majority of people, there will be no reason to fully own a self-driving car. A self-driving car will be something that you’ll call up on your watch or smartphone, it’ll show up promptly, drop you off somewhere, then drive itself off to pick someone else up. You won’t have to ride with strangers, or with a taxi driver, so you’ll have your privacy and feeling of autonomy. You can sleep or work or entertain yourself on the drive. You won’t have to be personally responsible for a vehicle’s battery charging, insurance and maintenance. It’s will be truly revolutionary gadget on par with things like the first Model T, the first Mac and the first iPhone.
As far as mall parking lots being crowded, you’re imagining what it would be like if people were driving the cars. Computers are much better than humans at sorting and queuing algorithms and simultaneous mass coordination. In fact, with almost nothing in the parking lot “parked” (self-driving taxis don’t need to park at the mall), there will be a lot of space dedicated to pick-up drop-offs.
>And they won’t hit the road for MANY, MANY more years.
So what? The longer we wait, the longer it’ll take. We have to get the work underway now or the fully autonomous car will never get done. Be glad it’s companies like Apple and Google and Tesla working on the problem. If it were left to GM, Ford and Toyota, it would take half a century or longer. With Apple, Google and Telsa leading the way on this technology, it’ll be on the market by 2025 or 2030. So if you’re pushing 70 today you might never get to ride in a self-driving car, but most everyone else will.
>Self-driving cars solve no real problem other than stopping drunk and dangerous driving.
These are huge problems. Huge. The company that solves them will be heralding a major social revolution. No more car accidents. No more drunk or distracted driving. Today, we just accept that there is a pretty decent chance that we are going to die the next time we get in our cars because of someone who’s looking at their phone. 20 years from now, that will be something so rare that no one will ever worry about happening. Automobile travel will go from being the most dangerous means of travel to being the safest over the course of a decade beginning with the introduction of the first mass-market fully autonomous car.
Kevlo:
“I think you’re not thinking this all the way through. The masses want self-driving cars. Only a few automobile geeks don’t. The majority of people, they might enjoy driving sometimes, but not usually. Nothing fun about driving to walmart, or work, or when you’re tired, or drunk, or sick.
There are many activities people like a lot more than operating an automobile… such as sleeping, reading, texting, playing games, watching tv. Self-driving cars that enable people to do these things on the way to and from work, to and from walmart, to and from grandma’s house, to and from the bars and clubs… these will be the biggest thing to hit the road since the Model T. Everyone will want one, even you.”
I have thought this through. I’ve studied this through in university as well. And I’ve been living in the tech industry for many years. And I am an Exec at an electric car company. I have no bias in this or stake regarding autonomous vehicles. Right now, self-driving cars are a HYPOTHESIS in terms of whether people will want them or not. Neither you, nor me, can say with certainty whether people will prefer them or not.
Your logic is as follows. You make the assumption that people don’t like driving. That is NOT a fact. That is your assumption. You have no data that shows “the majority of people [don’t usually enjoy driving themselves].” Zero. You just said that because that’s your opinion. Thus, your entire conclusion of “the masses want self-driving cars” is based on an unsupported assumption.
I’m going to take a guess that you’re American. And to also make a point that, even if more people than not in the US don’t like driving themselves, that does NOT mean that people in other countries don’t like driving themselves. Anyway…
The point is you have nothing to support your conclusion that the masses want self-driving cars. I’ve been around long enough to see and experience how predictions fail. That in the future, we’ll be doing x, y, z. But what ends up happening isn’t always what’s predicted. Bank Machines were supposed to obsolete bank tellers. They haven’t done anything of the sort. People want human interaction. They don’t want machines. And bank tellers simply haven’t been able to replace what those humans do after all of these years.
People are EMOTIONAL. That makes them somewhat unpredictable when it comes to making predictions about what they’ll do or want. That is something you fail to incorporate into your reasons, aside from your faulty, unscientific logic. The combination of the two is what can make a prediction fail, or even companies fail when someone like you is making product decisions.
One emotional aspect to this is people being in control and having the freedom to jump in a vehicle and go wherever. To change course. To just drive and think without any destination because they enjoy driving. To speed up, put the top of the convertible down, etc. Self-driving can be viewed as diapers on a baby.
As I alluded to in my previous post, this is what I predict will happen with self-driving cars:
-They’ll be niche: vertical markets. In the city, self-driving taxis will drive people places. These self-driving taxis will be mandated to have a taxi driver onboard. Delivery companies will use self-driving cars to do deliveries. And so forth;
-A self-driving mode will be a FEATURE of a vehicle that a person can choose to turn on or off in terms of their OWN vehicle;
-Self-driving cars are at least 10 years away, if not 20; and
-Self-driving cars will never overtake people freely driving themselves in our life-time.
Why consumers won’t use self-driving cars/mode very much in terms of it being on their OWN vehicle:
-Because it’ll be mandated that drivers will have to be in a driving position focused on the road and ready to take over (you can’t sit there and watch a movie). This makes it somewhat superfluous;
-People can be dynamic on the road, changing course, taking short-cuts, stopping in at a fast food place they see on the side of the road, and so forth. This will not be something that a self-driving vehicle will be able to easily accomplish;
-People will have trust issues with computers driving them and this will not easily go away. Pedestrians will fear self-driving cars as will drivers;
-Governments will likely either ban self-driving cars/mode on highways with speeds over 80 km/h or at the least mandate drivers to be in the driving position and ready to take over. Forget watching movies on long trips;
-People want to be free and in control when driving. This is my assumption. Sometimes you’ll want to speed. Sometimes not. Sometimes you’ll want to go slower than the speed limit. Sometimes you’ll want to stop quickly without warning. Self-driving cars don’t provide for this. And people will be averse and reject governments wanting to force self-driving aspects of driving in certain situations;
-Like all technology, self-driving cars will not be perfect, and accidents will happen. Anyone who doesn’t think this today is being delusional and has no experience in the transport industry.
Today, we HAVE SELF-DRIVING TRANSPORT. In Vancouver, the Skytrain on the Canada Line is fully autonomous. It’s driven by a computer. Its history is that it frequently breaks down and causes delays, but nonetheless works. Some of Volvo’s models have a self-driving mode. It’ll follow the car ahead by a certain distance. But you have to stop at stop signs, red lights, etc. It’s a bit superfluous.
So in the end, no, you are wrong. You will not be able to just go into a self-driving car and do nothing, watch movies, pick your nose, and whatever. YOU will be driving. When it comes to taxis, you WILL be riding with other people because that is what will end up being cost effective. That’s because it will be mandated that a person be in control of the self-driving vehicle in the car from the Taxi company.
When it comes to things like busy parkades, no, computers will not sort through better than humans. I deal with busy underground parkades all the time. They’re swamped with lots of people. You are just like everyone else. You will stand there and wait for your car with everyone else where your car is queued. Instead, you could have just walked to your car, assessed the situation, and taken another of the 4 exits possible onto different streets and got out quicker.
By the way, automobiles are NOT the most dangerous means of travel.
You give self-driving vehicles too much credit. Self-driving is a feature, period. It’s not going to revolutionize the road and people are not going to want to stop driving themselves. Geeks who want to wear diapers will.
Those are my predictions. Copy and paste them into your calendar and revisit them in the years to come.
For being the CEO of an electric car company, you sure lack the vision to drive the company forward. Please disclose which company you are CEO of so that we all can avoid making a major investment mistake.
Sorry, ‘exec’, not CEO.
Five stars for calling them “asshats”.
And the reason is simple: people want to be free, they don’t want to be controlled and constrained. Google has no idea. Really! You’ve just described Android , the complete opposite of the Apple heavily restrictive walled garden?
Alphabet – Chaos – Starbucks
Where’s Austin Powers when you need him?
I’d just cut to the chase and call it the NSA.
The NSA are rank amateurs compared to these guys, and may be more supportive of personal freedom — hard to tell when you reach this level of evil!
My kids hated Alphabetti Spaghetti.
A sneak, er, I mean rose by another name . . .
Uh oh, this spells trouble.
Evil Corp.
Anyone else thinking of Sesame Street, now?
A to Z, we spy on thee!
But Amazon has everything from A to Z…
What will be the abbreviation? ABCD?
Strikes Me as a move to literally have them listed, alphabetically, before Apple.
It’s an anagram.
Hatable P (rivacy)
It actually sounds like a company that doesn’t know what the fuck it wants to be. Like a ship with no rudder.
Looking at their products, I see nothing but mediocrity. Typical for an American company. The US lost its ‘greatest’ standing long ago. Apple is thankfully amoung the very few US companies that doesn’t suck.
Alphabet Inc. Do know evil.
OR DO NO EVIL?
God would have been a better name.
Do no evil.
Do know evil.
Create evil.
Alpha beta gamma delta, it’s all greek to me
Ok, so they will probably try and own the global rights/IP to the word ‘Alphabet’ and every use in language now I guess?
I hope to god that never happens!
Shot themselves in the foot. No one is ever going to say “just alphabet it” Morons.
Finally someone is referring to google for what they are, an online advertising company, I hate it when they call google a tech company.
This is an attempt by Google to game their own search rankings and confuse people.
Alphabet will come before Apple in an Alphabetical search.
I haven’t read all the comments, so, please forgive me if this was mentioned before, but, hey, Google is well known for not progressing beyond alpha or beta versions of its softwares, so, yeah, Alphabet looks to be apt.
Name it Mole Shït Inc.