You might remember that back in August, Google decided to shake things up a bit. With Larry Page and Sergey Brin going off to start Alphabet Inc. Which is basically a company to house all of the companies that are part of Google. That includes Google, YouTube, Nest and many others. In doing so, all of the project managers were promoted to CEO. That also means that Sundar Pichai was made CEO of Google. While the personnel restructuring happened in the middle of August, the stock restructuring is scheduled to happen today.
"...it expects that the Alphabet Merger will close after the close of business on October 2, 2015. Google anticipates that shares of Google Class C Capital Stock and shares of Google Class A Common Stock will begin trading as Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and Alphabet Class A Common Stock, respectively, on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on October 5, 2015. Shares of Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and shares of Alphabet Class A Common Stock will continue to be traded under the same ticker symbols under GOOG and GOOGL, respectively."
For those of you that might not be up to speed with investor relations. This basically means that current Google stock will be transferred over to Alphabet stock. Along with the trading still happening under the GOOG and GOOGL for the Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and Alphabet Class A Common Stock. The new stock will begin trading on the global market on October 5th, or this coming Monday.
The main reason for Google doing this is to avoid regulators. They are already being poked and prodded in the EU for anti-trust allegations. And by making everything separate but still under the Alphabet company name, they can keep doing what they want to do with providing internet through Google Fiber, creating amazing advances in technology with Google X, not to mention their self-driving cars.
Those that are not investors, and not all that interested in stock of Google or Alphabet, this doesn't mean much. For those users that are using Gmail, Inbox, Google Maps, or any of Google's other services, your experience won't be changing over the weekend. Google will still be the colorful company they have always been. This just means that parts of Google like Google X, Google Fiber, Nest, and others will be operated as subsidiaries under Alphabet. Which we've already gone over in detail in previous posts. You can check out the full statement from Google on their Investor Relations site which is linked in the source section below.