Rumors will still be just rumors, but on August 10, 2015 Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially announced a top to bottom clean up in regards to the company’s structure. While G will always be for Google, it will still be a letter, although the biggest one, in Alphabet. Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. in the public market and all of Google’s shares will automatically convert to the same number of shares for Alphabet.
Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. – says Larry Page, as a more simple explanation to the company’s major restructure.
Running Alphabet will be Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Ruth Porat as CFO. And what of our beloved Google? Alphabet’s new subsidiary, Google, will be run by Sundar Pichai, who was already running most of Google’s major businesses since last year.
For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google — the birth of Alphabet. We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for! I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products–the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands.”
While the move has been speculated by experts as a tax dodge, a set-up for something bigger or simply a move to make their investors happy the two founders seem to have given an explanation 11years ago in the original founder’s letter:
As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders’ letter 11 years ago, ‘Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one’,
But Larry and Sergey didn’t just settle for an overhaul of Google’s structure, they also went with a rebrand of their apps and services, which for business purposes is really not a bad move. But since this website isn’t a rip off of the Wall Street Journal we’ll stay focused on the design aspect.
The company explains it wanted the approachability of the old logo combined with “the mathematical purity of geometric forms with the childlike simplicity of schoolbook letter printing”.
While indeed the last letter brings to memory the Ficher Price logo, we consider it is a far cry from it. Both in style and message the new logo now stands in the present and manages to integrate well and naturally with the new material design principles Google, I’m sorry….Alphabet, has recently promoted and implemented across it’s network of apps and services. After 17 years of standing by it’s serif type logo, the company has finally made a more appropriate and for the future change to a custom “geometric” sans-serif type based logo. We feel the medium weight of the type expresses the tech giant the company has become while through it’s colors and playful setting of the last letter it maintains a childlike exuberace and faith in the future. Due to the new and simple “G” element of the brand, the compact version as it is, the company also upped the vibrance of it’s four color combination to avoid a blended effect when put next to each other.
As for the playful little dots, they represent Google at work for you. With a full range of “expressions” like: listening, thinking, replying, incomprehension, and confirmation, we simply love watching them jump around while working. They embody Google’s dynamics, intelligence and playfullnes and while their movement might seem spontaneous and random at times, they actually follow a consistent path and timing.
While we are very pleased and excited to see how these design principles spread across the company’s brands. But not everyone shares our opinion and it’s easy to observe that opinions are widely spread. A poll on independent Ad Age actually shows that 71% of people who voted actually dislike the new brand.
With every big change their will always be naysayers too, but as far as we are concerned we salute Google and it’s new brand. As always we are very excited to hear what are your opinions on the new brand and how it affects the tech giant’s image in the comment section below!
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