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Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

Buried in a paragraph 2/3 of the way down:

> ... Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. ...

Not knowing the internals of Google, it seems as if this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down. Is this correct?

If so, what an incredibly subtle way to announce a high-profile pair of resignations.

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Yes, this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down.

I wouldn't really call it "incredibly subtle" - most similar announcements are wrapped in a bunch of corporate language as well. This is a pretty standard way to announce this sort of thing.

Do you know what they will be doing next?

Distancing themselves as much as possible to avoid legal trouble I'm sure .

Cashing out before the antitrust suits start to hit.

I'm not sure how long these sort of antitrust cases take to litigate (I was young during Microsoft's high profile case), but I'd say this is one of the most rational explanations as to why, seemingly out of nowhere, they'd parachute away together.

It looks like an attempt to try to distance themselves, their personal images, and their assets before it gets too ugly. I would certainly do so unless my personal financial analysts told me otherwise.

Out of nowhere? - They created Alphabet to pull themselves out of daily Google business.

I've seen this explanation multiple times in this thread, but I find it incredibly hard to believe Alphabet was created to shift Sergey and Larry's time away from Google. It seems like there are far easier (and cheaper) ways of accomplishing this without creating a conglomerate.

Well, what they did is install a "CEO" for the main business, so they weren't operationally involved in that part of the business anymore and focused on different side businesses. Now the crown prince takes over everything operationally and the founders move to the board ... No idea if that was the primary plan, but certainly one of the options considered back then.

Yeah. As anyone at Google could tell you, they've been a familiar face at TGIF, and nothing more, for years.

At least at the operational level. I'm sure Sundar has had much contact with them. But regular Googlers certainly have not.

They've made other major moves together. This is apparently part of a slow fade they've been doing at least since they started Alphabet. The reasons behind that remain mysterious.

Mysterious? I'd personally retire to enjoy my millions long before I got to the point of having billions, so I don't think there's much explanation needed about why they'd want to not have to worry or work anymore.

> I'm not sure how long these sort of antitrust cases take to litigate

They typically take years, often over a decade. I'm talking about the entire process, not just the litigation (which is the easiest and fastest part). With Microsoft, it took 19 years from start to end.

My hunch would be that they are just bailing before they get mired in something like an antitrust suit. They strike me as the type of person that enjoys the fun of a fast startup environment, and a big Co under an antitrust suit is pretty much the opposite of that. I doubt they are driven by money as much, in comparison.

That's why they can cash out at 10% per year because they cases will last a -minimum- of 5-7 years. Google has the best lawyers in the world. Definitely a slow Homer recession into the bushes.

Those rarely result in lower stock prices.

I guess I just don't believe this. Google is one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. Having both people step down like this is incredibly strange.

I mean, neither of them even tried the ol' "I'm stepping down to spend time with my family" thing.

They were practically absent from day to day affairs anyways. This is unsurprising.

Larry and Sergey are basically best friends. Their involvement with Google, as a pair, has been receding for quite some time. Today's announcement was foreshadowed by the creation of Alphabet Inc. as a parent company in 2015.

After Brin’s affairs came to light, Page was so pissed off, he didn’t talk to him for many months. They might not be best friends at this point.

Details in Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder’s Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager | Vanity Fair http://archive.is/kQvuR Febr 2015

Would be interesting if they cashed out their war chest and started another search engine. Won't happen but fun to think about.

This has been well known for sometime now[0], it was a matter of when..

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/13/alphabets-larry-page-has-lar...

This paragraph seems pretty straightforward:

>Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost. While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents—offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!

From the outside, it feels much more like the company is hitting a midlife crisis (feeling unsettled, not as agile as they used to be) than a young adult.

Company lifespans these days are a lot shorter than human lifespans. 25-40 years seems typical, making a company-year 2-3x a human year.

By that yardstick, Google was in its young adolescence when it IPO'd (seems reasonable), was an idealistic young adult when I joined in 2009 (also reasonable), is now hitting a midlife crisis, and will die sometime around 2040.

Ignoring the lifespan, they are pretty stodgy and conservative now, so middle-aged just seems a better fit.

Yep I'm down with your timeline. I joined in 2012 and it felt like a person in their late 20s or 30s in an energetic but responsible part of their career, just settling down to have kids... But before all the buying of sailboats and sports cars and treatments for baldness...

So IBM is like a 300ish year old vampire then? They really seem like an outlier longevity-wise.

Well, unlike people, companies don't begin to die at a super-exponential rate once they hit a certain age.

Certainly it feels like that :D

If IBM is a "300ish year old vampire", Nintendo is basically God.

A better comparison is likely an old tree that is mostly dead tissue, but that dead tissue is solid enough to support its own weight.

The funny thing is: If you are used to coporate speech, then immediately after you read the headline "A letter from Larry and Sergey" you know that there is a resignation coming up.

"An update on Larry and Sergey"

No no no, Larry and Sergey are simply pivoting.

It's not subtle at all. Anyone who knows the current state of affairs (i.e. Sundar being CEO of Google) will have deduced this based on the myriad of titles on this topic alone.

Nah, anyone used to reading Google press releases knows that a subject line of, "An Update on X" always means X is being shut down, and thus, "A letter from Larry and Sergey" could mean nothing else except they're stepping down.

I came to the comments to express my disappointment this wasn't titled "an update on Larry and Sergey".

This meme has to die. It's time.

When the entire culture of a multibillion dollar megacorporation has become one big meme, there's not much that can be done

I remember Google's earlier days when they shutdown projects and people praised them for iterating fast, not carrying weight, etc. The only difference now is that they have more users but I think they have given enough warnings about their shutdowns, IMHO.

Now that Google Is Evil (tm), we don't seem to appreciate that behavior as much as we did in the past.

An Update On This Meme

Only if it isn't true. It's still true.

You mean they should post "an update on updates"? It seems pretty reliable, actually.

Maybe it'll get acquired by Google soon?

An Update On This Meme It's Time

But it's still in beta!

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