Under the rebranding, Google will retain its best-known businesses, such as search, apps, YouTube and Android.

Some of the newer entities, such as the investment and research divisions, the "smart-home" unit Nest, and the drone arm will be run under Alphabet.

Google founder Larry Page said it would create a simpler structure for what had become a diverse group of businesses.

"This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google," he said in the blogpost.

"Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable," he said. "The whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands."

Page will be Alphabet's CEO and Sundar Pichai becoming CEO of Google.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin will become president of Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, the current Google chairman, will be executive chairman of the holding company.

BGC Partners' investment analyst Colin Gillis said the new structure should give investors greater clarity on strategy and how much Google was spending on new products.

So why in all the universe did Google choose Alphabet as a name? Page said it was because it represents language, "the core of how we index with Google search."

Apparently it is also because Alpha-bet means "investment return above benchmark" we are not sure where it means that, we guess Brin did a search on it. We would have thought Alpha & Omega would have been a better name for Google, but we are not multi-billionaires so what do we know?