

Ask HN: The biggest shift in tech was a few days ago, what does it really mean? - 1arity

Google, a thing that has touched and changed the lives of pretty much everyone online, a thing that has literally shaped the minds of humans for the last decade with their influential search and ranking algorithm, one of the most valuable companies in the world, an employer of 50,000, was suddenly absorbed into a parent company called, of all things, Alphabet, and the structure of Google subsidiaries, like Nest, was suddenly changed, and Page and Brin became CEO and President of Alphabet, working together in a closer formal function than since Google began.<p>There&#x27;s move fast, there&#x27;s be disruptive, and then there&#x27;s this. You could say it&#x27;s just a change on paper. And yet it is not.<p>When I read the news I literally felt the ground shift under my feet. You may not believe this, but when I read that news, I felt a similar “everything changes” shock to when I saw the plane hitting the tower in New York. I was in my final year of high school then, about to have breakfast and go to an English exam, and then I saw that on TV. I felt sad and angry, and cold, and like someone had attacked us. I didn’t feel positive or negative about the Alphabet news, and yet I felt something akin to the same level of shock. I grew up with this search engine. I remember the internet on 14.4 K modems when I was a teenager. I remember the first time I used Google. I remember google.stanfrod.edu. For all this time, Google, has been the focus of attention, the pinnacle, the creator of all these things. The force driving forward. And now the two men from whom came Google, have now made this abrupt turn. And there’s Alphabet.<p>I could not believe the news when I read it, and yet it’s true. It happened a couple of days ago.<p>What does this really mean ? What&#x27;s coming next and what are the two founders thinking ?
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1arity
Here's some thinking from Google employees on this :
[http://www.quora.com/What-do-Google-employees-think-of-
the-c...](http://www.quora.com/What-do-Google-employees-think-of-the-creation-
of-Alphabet-Inc)

