What Google's Alphabet means for Android

In the wake of Google's announcement that it will restructure around a parent company called Alphabet, a lot of the focus has been on what Google doesn't have anymore. Self-driving cars, drones, fiber-optic Internet service — these projects are now essentially Google-free, the domain of the Alphabet conglomerate.

Google — the new, slimmed-down version — gets to keep search, ads, Android and other mature technologies and products, including YouTube. It still makes pretty much all of the money, but the brand will likely lose a little of the startup coolness it enjoyed by being associated with "moonshot" projects. (Not coincidentally, it'll also lose some of the pressure for those projects to perform financially.) Read more...