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If you've invested in Alphabet without knowing that it's the company formerly known as Google you probably aren't someone who reads many articles about them.
by jinst8gmi 11y ago
If you've invested in Alphabet without knowing that it's the company formerly known as Google you probably aren't someone who reads many articles about them.
- eropple 11y agoIf you thought Alphabet is the company formerly known as Google, you would be wrong. Alphabet is a conglomerate created to hold Google and was created first as a subsidiary of Google, to which a separate dummy subsidiary was created with which Google merged to convert Google stock into Alphabet stock. Alphabet is not Google. Alphabet never was Google. Alphabet owns Google, and the performance of Google is tracked under Alphabet's own stock (which still uses GOOG, but is a concretely different stock). There is a difference, and these are people to whom it matters.
- jinst8gmi 11y agoQuite a convenient way of structuring things if you're worried about anti-monopoly regulators? In practice everyone knows it's everything which was previously under the Google umbrella.
- eropple 11y agoAnd what "everyone knows" is not relevant to WSJ's audience. The company is Alphabet. It is not Google. I don't think this can be stated in simpler terms. The WSJ's news section can be considered jargon of its own. I'm sure you would not react in the same way if a "business guy" criticized a piece of technical reporting for things you expected to be in it.
- gohrt 11y agoGoogle is a company. Alphabet is a company. Alphabet owns Google.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> The company is Alphabet. It is not Google. I don't think this can be stated in simpler terms. Those terms are simple, but not accurate. The company this story is about is Google. Alphabet is the public traded corporation in whom WSJ readers may wish to invest (or disinvest) that owns the company the story is about. (Google and Alphabet are both companies, but Alphabet isn't taking any action that is being reported in this story.)
- eropple 11y agoSure, you are that most important kind of correct: technically so. And so I'll amend it: "the company that matters to the WSJ's audience is Alphabet because they're where the money is." The mixture of pedantry and willful vagueness in this thread is weird.