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IPFS News Link • Business/ Commerce

Why Google's new structure may make it worth more than the sum of its parts

• http://blogs.reuters.com

Google is learning the ABCs of conglomerate life. The $444 billion web-search goliath is separating its driverless cars, balloon-powered internet, biotech ventures and the like from its main ad businesses under a new Berkshire Hathaway-like structure called Alphabet. The move suggests Google recognizes how its sprawl has spelled trouble.

Outside perceptions began to change four years ago. That's when Google expanded from smartphone software into hardware with its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, its largest-ever acquisition. The deal attracted the attention of U.S. and European trustbusters, who worried about how a more dominant Google might use the thousands of patents it bought. Wall Street began trotting out sum-of-the-parts analyses, as sure a sign as any of the harms of diversification.

Google later sold the handset-manufacturing arm to Lenovo, but it also has spread itself vastly into myriad new areas since then. It is producing Nest thermostats, hunting for ways to prolong human life at Calico, testing drone delivery in its X lab and investing in many new developments by way of its Venture and Capital arms. In the process, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have created a less value-seeking but more technology-powered version of Warren Buffett's variegated enterprise.

Worries about just how much all this mad science might be costing have grown, especially with Facebook's increasing strength as an online advertising competitor. The social network fetches a valuation of 34 times next year's earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data, compared to Google's multiple of 19 times.


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