Alphabet Inc.
[14][15] In his announcement, Page stated that the planned holding company would allow for "more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren't very related" to Google.[17] Schmidt said he encouraged Page and Brin to meet with Buffett in Omaha to see how Berkshire Hathaway was a holding company made of subsidiaries with strong CEOs who were trusted to run their businesses.[20] On December 3, 2019, Page and Brin jointly announced that they would step down from their respective roles, remaining as employees and still the majority vote on the board of directors."[23] In January 2024, Waymo, the autonomous driving division of Alphabet Inc., which operates extensively in San Francisco, filed an application with the California Public Utilities Commission to expand service in Los Angeles.Willow reduces error rates in quantum computing and can correct them in real time, which could lead to breakthroughs in science, medicine, and finance.[38] In January 2021, Loon LLC CEO Alastair Westgarth mentioned in a blog post[39] that the company would be shutting down, citing lack of a scalable and sustainable business model.[40] In November 2021, Alphabet announced a new company named Isomorphic Labs, using artificial intelligence for drug discovery and headed by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for!In a 2018 talk, Schmidt disclosed that the original inspiration for the name came from the location of the then Google Hamburg office's street address: ABC-Straße.[47][48] Google's mission statement, from the outset, was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful",[49] and its unofficial slogan is "Don't be evil".[70] In November 2017, Alphabet Inc. led a Series A round of $71 million along with Andreessen Horowitz and 20th Century Studios in music startup UnitedMasters, founded by Steve Stoute.[72] An analysis of the company's investments in 2017 suggested that it was the most active investor in that period, outdoing the capital arm of Intel and also its own best customer.[76] In October 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google and Alphabet due to "non-public" Google+ account data being exposed as a result of a privacy bug that allowed app developers to gain access to the private information of users.[80] On 2 December 2020, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint that claimed Alphabet Inc conducted unlawful monitoring and questioning of several workers at Google.[86] According to various posts on social media, several Google employees discovered they had been terminated after they were unable to access their accounts and confirming it through news articles discussing the mass layoffs.