While the announcement of Alphabet and the switch from Google being the head of all the companies connected to it to just another subsidiary signifies some big changes for everyone involved at the company, the overall consensus is that these are to be good changes, successful ones, that will ultimately result in a better collective of future technologies. The company restructuring may even push things to monumental new heights, as one analyst believes Alphabet has the potential to become the GE of the modern technological generation. Analyst Colin Sebastian of Baird compares the vast and diverse grouping of technological advancements that Alphabet and its now many subsidiary companies are researching to the likes of what GE has done in the past, moving from offering a majority of lighting related products to branching out into the aircraft engines, healthcare and oil & gas industries among others.
Where Google once had Search as the majority offering of where it made the bulk of its money (and this is still true to some extent) with Alphabet in place they now have a much wider range of possible areas of income moving forward including mobile with Android, venture capital with Google Ventures and Google Capital, automotive and robotics, life sciences, virtual reality, machine learning, drones, connected homes with Nest’s range of smart home products, and much more. Alphabet’s portfolio of industries in which it has its hands is a wide-cast net.
Based on some of Baird’s calculations, Alphabet has the opportunity to expand things into a potentially much larger business with immense growth due to some of its most potentially lucrative options like Nest, which is focused on a $20 billion market of home automation. Other industries like the local-commerce market is worth $1.4 trillion, and with Express Alphabet has access to a lot of untapped growth and revenue. Other major opportunities for Alphabet are their Life Sciences business which taps into medical and biotech products, and their Fiber businesses which taps into the market of broadband internet, which are $45 billion and $140 billion markets respectively. The point is, Alphabet has its hands in everything, and with founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin both essentially relieved of the duties at Google, they’re free to focus wholly on turning Alphabet into something much bigger.