Attention investors: As of 4 p.m. on Friday, Google will be no more. In its place will be Alphabet. At the close of trading Friday, Google shares will officially stop trading as Google shares and will instead trade as shares of Alphabet Inc. To make matters more confusing, it seems these shares will be traded under the same GOOG stock ticker symbol.
FROM EARLIER: Google’s Nexus 5X ships with a USB-C cable that can’t be connected to most computers
“Google anticipates that shares of Google Class C Capital Stock and shares of Google Class A Common Stock will begin trading as Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and Alphabet Class A Common Stock, respectively, on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on October 5, 2015,” Google explains on its investors page. “Shares of Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and shares of Alphabet Class A Common Stock will continue to be traded under the same ticker symbols under GOOG and GOOGL, respectively.”
Google announced this past summer that it was renaming itself as Alphabet, which would serve as a parent company to several subsidiaries, including Google itself. Under the new corporate structure, Page will be Alphabet’s CEO, Sergey Brin will be Alphabet’s president and Android boss Sundar Pichai will take over as CEO of Google.
In general, many industry observers think Google has done this to keep some of its zanier “moonshot” projects, including life extension research, separate from the core Google brand. In case you’re wondering, this chart does a nice job of breaking down all of the subsidiaries that will operate under the Alphabet umbrella:
