LinkedIn - Goodbye Google! Welcome Alphabet
I have read a very interesting article lately about the artificial agent strategy of two giants, Google and Apple, here: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/03/419540367/how-personal-should-a-personal-assistant-get-google-and-apple-disagree - and I think that is related to this move.
I see a great change in how we use the internet today.
When Google started its stratospheric journey, "being on the net" practically meant putting some HTML content on some servers and wait for people finding them. Google was THE perfect tool to find "all" information, rank, sort and provide it, without any extra stuff (portal, news, etc.), pure information, the quite fair illusion of truth. This had enormous marketing value, and Google used that potential very smartly, to build up a complete ecosystem.
However, now we have enormous amount of programmers, toolkits, frameworks.
Companies, businesses create their own smart applications to be present on the market directly, especially on handheld devices, native platforms. The source of data is running dry, not accessible by google indexing - consequently the "truth" is not trusted anymore. You don't look up your holiday location, your next car, your next restaurant on Google, but targeted locator applications, you prefer social media for reviews, gamification, etc.
Google has to dig deeper for data and trust.
Search is one thing, Google is associated with that, gives and will further provide fair profit, and that's good. You don't slaughter the cattle that you can milk. But Google must enter the "framework market": cloud, ERP, CRM, "?aaS" tools at the data providers, and with smart, "know it all" agents on the client side with their tools to get back the amount of raw data it once had. (I see the same behind the book digitization project as well.) Google as a company, has the resources (technologies, patents, personnel, data), and a wide portfolio to fight for it, but must act now and quickly.
That does not work "under" Google. That is Alphabet. Smart move.
My 2 cents.
