Google on Monday announced that it is creating a new company called Alphabet, which will oversee Google and all the various side projects in which the search giant has invested.
As part of the change, Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome, and Apps, will replace Larry Page as CEO of Google.
"What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies," Page wrote in a blog post Monday. "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."
So, companies like Life Sciences, which works on glucose-sensing contact lenses, and Calico, focused on longevity, will now be part of Alphabet, instead of Google.
"Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren't very related," Page wrote.
Page will now oversee Alphabet along with fellow Google founder Sergey Brin, who will serve as President of the new firm.
"For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google — the birth of Alphabet," Page wrote. "We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search!"
Each company under Alphabet will have its own CEO, with Page and Sergey providing assistance as needed.
"I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products — the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands," Page wrote.
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 the same rights. Google will become a subsidiary of Alphabet, and the company's two classes of shares will continue to trade on the Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.
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The move comes as critics questioned whether Google was spreading itself too thin with projects that were far removed from its search roots, from self-driving cars to Internet-delivery drones.
Brin and Page have long shrugged off any criticism. Last year, Page said he "always thought it was stupid if you had this big company and you could only do five things."
If you have 30,000 employees and they're all doing the same thing, that isn't very exciting for them, he continued. "Ideally, a company would scale the number of things it does with the number of people, [but] as far as I can tell, that never happens."
Sundar Pichai
Meanwhile, Page said that Pichai "has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses."
"I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations," Page added.
In 2013, Google combined its Android and Chrome teams, and handed over control of the newly formed division to Pichai. Andy Rubin, who had served as Android chief, moved over to robotics, but later left the search giant.
Since then, Pichai has been the public face of Android and Chrome, taking the stage at Google I/O to outline upcoming changes to Google's popular OS and browser. In announcing the promotion, Page pointed to Pichai's work on Google Photos and Google Now.
For more, check out 15 Things to Know About Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Chloe Albanesius contributed to this story.