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Comment by rbinv | Hacker News Reader

From the abc.xyz source code:

Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort<a href="http://www.hooli.xyz/" target="_blank" class="hidden-link">.</a>

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I wondered if the reorg would have any impact on the stock price. Given this joke, now I really wonder.

Are we sure it isn't April 1st? Are we sure this press release isn't a hoax?

This is so wild I'm having trouble believing any of it.

It's an easter egg. It's a pretty common thing Google does.

it's not an easter egg, just click the 'more' link

It's a hyperlinked period with the class "hidden-link".

The Hooli link is an easter egg. Hooli is the evil company (a parody of Google) in the show Silicon Valley.

Alphabet is only missing a startup accelerator, why wouldn't Sergey and Larry now focus on earlier stage themselves? All those ambitious things can be achieved better by a lot of startupa competing in parallel.

V is for Ventures and Capital

W is for Wing

X is for X Lab

Y is for ...

Youtube

Nope, Alphabet spells YouTube with a G.

Gootube is Alphabet's new Soylent competitor.

Yolo

Yo.

y is for ycombinator - a startup accelerator owned by google - hmmmmmmm

A - AirBnb U - Uber P - Pinterest or Palantir (they need to work hard) May be they should create a sub companies for the collisions.

Btw, i was thinking Amazon A2Z was doing this virtually.

One thing I've heard is that this would help them in terms of taxes, allowing them to write off projects that don't make money, although I'm not entirely clear on how Alphabet would accomplish this.

That would be no joke if that was a reason to do it.

couldn't they do that now anyway with all being under the same entity. I don't think this helps with taxes (at least not in this regard).

Either way, WOW!

I see. I wasn't entirely clear on it, and I guess the source I got it from wasn't either.

The first thing I thought of involved the regulations and other troubles that Google was facing in the EU. Those troubles seemed to summarize as "Google is too big and is taking advantage of its large market share". Alphabet looks like it'll fracture the google businesses more, which might help reduce the issues they're facing in the EU.

But that's just my best guess

Well, Google is already quite fractured in the EU - it has something like 20 subsidiaries, one in most EU countries[0] ?

That is also a common (mandatory?) setup, for multinational companies to have a local subsidiary in every country where they operate. I guess institutions like the EU must be handle that and focus on the activity independently of the fine details of the company structure, so that the restructuring would not really help or hinder.

[0] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125070...

>> The first thing I thought of involved the regulations and other troubles that Google was facing in the EU. Those troubles seemed to summarize as "Google is too big and is taking advantage of its large market share". Alphabet looks like it'll fracture the google businesses more, which might help reduce the issues they're facing in the EU. > Well, Google is already quite fractured in the EU - it has something like 20 subsidiaries, one in most EU countries

Seperation at the marketing end for ad services, or for purposes of tax optimisation, does not really alleviate any of the antitrust concerns. It's the services that matter. Google's main ad business and search being in the same company for example.

So the current EU subsidiaries would not have an effect on the EU investigation, but this current plan might.

IANAL, but it seems unlikely. The Alphabet move doesn't appear to be splitting out the components the EU regulators appear to care about (search, ads, maps) from each other. If regulators are concerned about the effects of personal information consolidation, that's not changing.

>... any impact on the stock price.

It's up 5.88% (or $26bn) in after hours trading.

It seems to me that their domain name (https://abc.xyz/), and maybe even the corporate name, was chosen to imitate Hooli XYZ.

Pardon my ignorance, but what's hooly.xyz? Google's innovation lab?

http://hooli.xyz is a company on the HBO show "Silicon Valley" - modeled after, and parodying Google.

There's an Easter Egg on the site where one of the periods is a link to http://www.hooli.xyz . So yeah it was a nod to that for sure.

edit: The easter egg is on abc.xyz not the blogspot announcement.

Keep an eye on this:

https://abc.xyz/jobs -> https://abc.xyz/about/careers/

404!!1

hm, that's a new http error that i'm not familiar with

Google can't be Hooli! Facebook is already Hooli... just compare the Nucleus logo to the React logo...

Is it any coincidence that Facebook released http://nuclide.io?

.xyz domains are selling at 90% discount, in case anyone is interested.

Yaa, $1 for a domain like hooli.xyz or Google, I mean Alphabet ( https://abc.xyz ). I'll try it out.

Just snapped up prefi.xyz, suffi.xyz, picka.xyz, icebo.xyz, equino.xyz, mailbo.xyz, postbo.xyz, rolode.xyz, soapbo.xyz, toolbo.xyz, lunchbo.xyz, letterbo.xyz, chatterbo.xyz for about $15 total for all of them.

I skipped on conve.xyz, laryn.xyz, proli.xyz, and surta.xyz, which were all open a few minutes ago.

Glad to see innovation in action. This is the kind of stuff that makes the web worse - domain squatting.

> Glad to see innovation in action.

Thank you!

I sent in a registration for proof.com on February 3, 1996, but missed out on it by a few hours to some other dude. Never again!

Just snapped up remar.xyz, networ.xyz, noteboo.xyz, payche.xyz and a few more.

Went on a geometry/graphics kick and snapped up stuff like plotting.xyz and intercepts.xyz as well.

I don't make the rules, I just play by them.

Thankfully the proliferation of gTLDs is increasing the supply and lowering the value for squatters like you. You screwed up in 1996, and you're screwing up again now, but hey, it's your money.

> I don't make the rules, I just play by them.

We all make the rules.

The rich boys are speculating on everything. I don't see anything wrong with poor boys taking a chance on an domain name? Yes--I don't like squatting, but when you have huge companies buying up huge blocks of names; I actually encourage the little guy to buy a few, and hope?

The rich boys always seem to get the best names first?

(I do wish when domains expired, the domain company wouldn't have first shot at buying the expired domain? Why are they allowed to do this? It doesn't seem fair? Maybe, I got the protocol wrong?)

Perhaps, but domain squatting also produced the incentive to diversify gTLDs, something that would have taken much longer otherwise? I'm not sure.

Which is also generally considered a bad thing.

Wouldn't you have to pay the full price next year?

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