Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have announced that they have restructured Google so it is now a division of a bigger company called Alphabet.

The new parent company, run by Page and Brin, allows the new venture to create a number of companies from the current divisions it has within Google. That should give them greater autonomy and direction without getting muddled within the internet focused giant that it currently is.

It also means that Google exec Sundar Pichai becomes the new CEO of Google replacing Page as he moves to the new parent company with Brin to oversee all aspects of Alphabet. 

"What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead," Page explained as part of a blog.

Rumours are already circling that Pichai was about to leave Google and this approach allows the company to reward him with the coveted CEO spot, but it more likely to do with the fact that Google's interests are no longer just about search engines or ways of using the internet to service its customers, but about autonomous cars, "Moonshots", providing fibre broadband, and much more.  

On a business front it also means that Alphabet can promote division heads to CEO status, give them more of a free reign in how they run the company, but most importantly keep them within the overall company as a whole. Commentators are also suggesting that the move could be a way for Google to fend off EU monopoly investigations. 

"Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X Lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure."

Google will now be just one of many companies owned by Alphabet.

That list so far detailed includes: Calico, Fiver, Google (which will cover everything from search, maps, YouTube, Android, ads and apps), Google Ventures, Google Capital, Google X, Life Sciences, and Nest.

According to Page, Alphabet will replace Google as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet.

And to show that the pair still have a sense of humour, in the same way they did when they launched Google in the nineties, the announcement blog post hides a secret Easter egg for fans of the HBO sitcom Silicon Valley.

Clicking on the full stop after the words "our drone delivery effort." takes you to the hooli.xyz website, the fictional company based on Google in the series.

Google investors clearly like the news, the shares are up around six per cent adding a further $20 billion to the new company's value