Alphabet Inc

Alphabet Inc. is a holding company that does business. The company provides services through its numerous subsidiaries, including web-based search, hardware devices, enterprise solutions, software applications, maps, and adverts.

Google, a global leader in technology, changed its name to Alphabet in 2015. However, the business continues to trade under the GOOG and GOOGL names on the stock market. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced their decision to leave management in December 2019, at which point Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, took over as Alphabet’s leader.

While Google continues to focus primarily on search, cloud services, smartphone platforms, and advertising as these sources account for the majority of its revenue, Alphabet has begun focusing on other “big bet” companies.

Pixel phones, Chromecast with Google TV, and the Google Nest Hub smart display are among Google’s hardware offerings. In the meantime, the licencing, research and development (R&D), and sales of television and Internet services are the main priorities of the Other Bets division.

The Google division of Alphabet Inc. is divided into Google Services and Google Cloud.

Google Services: This section covers Chrome, Android, Gmail, Maps, Search, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Photos, and Google Play as goods and platforms.

Google Cloud: This category includes Google Workspace and the Google Cloud Platform as enterprise-ready cloud services.

• Google Cloud Platform: This platform enables application development, testing, and setup on its infrastructure for developers.
• Google Workspace: This collaboration suite of apps includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Meet.

Popular Subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc

YouTube

The largest video-sharing website, YouTube, was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion back in 2006. It’s interesting to note that Yahoo and Google were the last two bidders for YouTube until Google eventually acquired the company. The estimated half-dozen participants in the bidding battle included Viacom, Microsoft, and News Corp.

With more than 2 billion users on its platform, the internet giant found that the acquisition proved to be a worthwhile investment.

Calico

This research and development firm seeks to improve our understanding of biology—which governs things like ageing and lifespan—by utilising cutting-edge technologies.

The goal of Calico, which is partnering with biotech giant AbbVie Inc. (ABBV), according to Alphabet’s Q3 2019 financial statement, is to “discover, develop, and bring to market new therapies for patients with age-related diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer.”

The platform has been creating its own technology and software to automate and speed up the search for answers regarding lifespan in human DNA.

Verily

Indeed, Alphabet’s life science division is a platform that handles health data organisation. The company is creating a range of tools and technology, such as surgical robots, with the goal of enhancing human health.

In its 2018 annual report, Alphabet said that Temasek, an investment firm, paid $800 million in cash in 2017 to purchase a noncontrolling stake in Verily. Without taking into account any potential gains or losses, the transactions were recorded as stock transactions.

Recently, the platform gained attention for obtaining an additional $700 million to grow its commercial company. This includes Baseline, the clinical healthcare platform that has been used to perform Covid19 research, as well as other aspects of the platform. Among the investors were Temasek and other current platform backers.

Waymo

Waymo envisions a world where it is simpler for people to go about, with less traffic and fewer accidents caused by inattentive, reckless, or intoxicated human drivers.

Instead of calling itself a self-driving car firm, the platform refers to itself as a self-driving technology company.

With its 360-degree perception technology, Waymo can detect obstructions from as far away as several hundred yards away, including as other cars, pedestrians, and construction sites. Alphabet contributed to the platform’s most recent $3.2 billion fundraising round, which was overseen by an outside party.

Wing

Operating under the names “X” or “Moonshot factory,” this firm is part of Alphabet’s Other Bets division. The platform creates technology for goods delivery using drones.

The goal of Project Wing is to completely transform the way that things are transported. The platform is developing autonomous drones to more effectively and environmentally sustainably deliver goods to suburban homes, including local food, products, pharmacy supplies, and even library books.

To properly route drones throughout the skies, the platform uses an unmanned traffic management system. The platform gained attention in 2014 for assisting farmers in rural Queensland, Australia, with the delivery of medications, candy bars, and dog food. It started delivering burritos to Virginia Tech students in September 2016.

Chronicle

Alphabet entered the cybersecurity space with Chronicle. Backstory, the platform’s main offering, is built on the rapidly expanding Google infrastructure and focuses on providing organisations with a less expensive way to analyse and consolidate their security data in order to investigate and detect threats at Google speed and scale.

Alphabet merged Chronicle into its Google Cloud service in 2019.

Jigsaw

Jigsaw, formerly known as “Google Ideas,” is an incubator searching innovative answers to a number of international security issues, including organised crime, violent extremism, censorship, corruption, and online harassment. The name “Jigsaw” came from the simple realisation that difficult puzzles are typically associated with complicated problems.

According to its website, the platform is a division of Google that investigates risks to open societies and creates technology that motivates large-scale solutions. Alphabet shifted Jigsaw to Google’s administration in February 2020.

Nest

The $3 billion purchase of Nest by Google in 2014 marked the company’s official entry into the “smart home device” industry.

Nest operated independently of Google for about three years before Alphabet decided to merge the platform into Google Home in early 2018. All Google Home products, including smart speakers and thermostats, were sold under the Google Nest brand.

Fitbit

Google recently purchased Fitbit in January 2021. With over 29 million active members, the site is well-known for its wellness devices, which monitor various health parameters and steps.

The platform was founded in 2007 and launched live for the public in 2015. After Fitbit’s acquisition was completed, the platform’s equity was no longer exchangeable.

How Alphabet Inc. Makes Money

In addition to its Other Bets, Alphabet is well-known for being the parent company of the industry-leading digital behemoth Google. Let’s examine how Alphabet makes money from various platforms, as stated in the platform’s annual report for 2020.

Google’s platform consists of two parts, Google Services and Google Cloud, as was previously mentioned. Both segments produce revenue in different ways.

The primary sources of income for these platforms are internet and TV services, together with licencing and research and development services.

Fees for Google Cloud Platform services and Google Workspace collaboration tools are the main source of income for Google Cloud.

Other Bets: Alphabet’s platform for Other Bets brings together companies in different phases of development, and the company’s goal is to help each of them prosper in the medium to long run. Even though the profitability of early-stage enterprises is questionable, many of them have already started to make money and are doing well in their respective industries. These platforms mostly rely on licencing and R&D services in addition to internet and TV services for their revenue.