Alphabet announced today that Eric Schmidt is stepping down as the company’s executive chairman. Schmidt will transition to a new role as a technical advisor and will continue to serve on the company’s board.
Alphabet’s innovations lab, X, is testing a new approach to bringing Internet connectivity to people in developing countries. In addition to floating Wi-Fi hotspots in balloons, it is now using laser beam links which it has described as ‘just like fibre optic cable, but without the cable’ …
UnitedMasters is a new music label attempting to disrupt the record industry with artist-friendly contracts and data-driven services. Exiting stealth today, it has some unique features and terms that benefit artists, with investment backing from Alphabet.
Alphabet has just released its Q3 2017 results, with earnings of $27.72 billion, up 24% from the same quarter last year. These numbers cover July to September of this year and beat analyst expectations, with the stock up over 4% in after-hours trading.
Last month, Google was rumored to be mulling a huge investment in Lyft as the two companies work together against Uber to bring self-driving cars to the mainstream. Today, the ride-sharing service announced that Alphabet’s CapitalG investment fund led a $1 billion financing round.
Back in July, a report revealed that Verily Life Sciences made an investment and built a lab for cancer detection startup Freenome at its campus. The Alphabet division has now revealed that the lab and offices are a part of the Verily Partner Space to foster collaboration with “pioneering start-ups.”
Nearly two years after the reorganization was announced, Waymo, Verily, and the “Other Bets” are now legally Alphabet subsidiaries. Before this, the companies were all technically considered subsidiaries of Google. However, thanks to a new XXVI holding company the structure revealed in 2015 will soon be in effect.
Generating energy by flying a plane-like vehicle with propellers, one of X’s oldest clean energy projects is facing stiff competition from the falling price of existing green energy sources. As a result, Alphabet’s support of Project Makani has fallen since its 2013 acquisition, while the same fate befalls many of the research lab’s other climate change-fighting moonshots.
Back in 2013, Facebook offered to acquire Snap for close to $3 billion. The ephemeral messaging service of course declined that proposal, and now appears to have spurned another deal to the tune of $30 billion from Google.
The chairman of the U.S. Committee on Energy and Commerce, Greg Walden, has now called on tech leaders to testify on the future of net neutrality. Invitations to a hearing set for later this year were sent Tuesday to Alphabet execs as well as chief executives from other large corporations such as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Charter, and more…
Alphabet has just published Q2 2017 earnings of $26.01 billion, up 21% from the same quarter last year. While these numbers beat analyst revenue expectations of $25.64 billion, the stock is down 3% in after-hours trading.
Ahead of Q2 2017 earnings this afternoon, Alphabet has announced that Sundar Pichai is joining its board of directors. This move gives Google — the key revenue maker — a second seat on the now 13 member committee responsible for overseeing the sprawling Alphabet conglomerate.
Most of a key Project Loon patent has been cancelled by the US Patent and Trademark Office after another company succeeded in convincing the agency that it came up with the idea first.
Project Loon uses free-floating balloons to provide Internet access to remote areas, beaming down Wi-Fi from overhead. The patent which has been cancelled relates to how Alphabet steers the balloons …
A Nasdaq glitch caused a number of major trading platforms to display Alphabet’s share value as $123.47, some 86% below its true value at the time. The incorrect price for Google’s parent company was shown on Bloomberg, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and others.
According to Recode, Nest has lost its long-time head of industrial design. Overseeing a number of products since 2013, including the recently announced Nest Cam IQ, Rocky Jacob is leaving for European luxury brand LVMH.
Over a year after reports first emerged that Alphabet was going to sell Boston Dynamics, a deal has finally been announced. SoftBank will be acquiring the robotics company, though exact details of the transaction have not been revealed.
Alphabet Class A shares ($GOOGL) hit new record highs today, soaring past the $1,000 per share mark. Alphabet Inc Class A is up 7.80 points on the day, or 0.78%. Alphabet Inc Class C, on the other hand, is straddling the line just below the $1,000 mark, sitting at 983.28 at the time of this writing and up nearly the same amount.
During an interview at the Code Conference this week, Alphabet’s Ruth Porat provided an overview on the state of Google and the Other Bets. The CFO discussed what she sees as the biggest threat to the dominant business, as well as progress on Fiber, X, and more.
Nest has today announced Nest Cam IQ, the latest in its lineup of home security cameras and the new indoor offering to beat from the Alphabet-owned maker of smarthome products. The camera packs new higher-quality video, much more powerful speakers, a crisp and clean new design, and built-in security features. Overall, as the name suggests, it’s just smarter and better…
According to a research note from Morgan Stanley analysts Brian Nowak and Adam Jonas (via Business Insider), Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving car unit could be worth as much as $70 billion. The analysts furthermore told investors that Waymo would be a good spin out candidate and that its value is not being taken into account in Alphabet’s current stock price…
As part of its broader research into life sciences, Verily is tackling mental health by using technology to allow for earlier diagnosis and intervention. However, the Alphabet division has lost a major hire, with Dr. Thomas Insel departing.
Alphabet has just published Q1 2017 earnings of $24.75 billion, up 22% from the same quarter last year. These numbers cover the first three months of the year and beat analyst expectations, with the stock up 4% in after-hours trading.
Ahead of the first earnings report for 2017 this afternoon, Alphabet CEO Larry Page has penned a founders’ letter recapping the previous year. Providing an overview on the progress of the various Alphabet bets, Page also touched on machine learning and AI.