Google’s leaders are turning the company into a subsidiary of a new “collection of companies” called “Alphabet,” Google co-founder Larry Page announced in a Monday afternoon blog post that shocked the technology community.
Page will run Alphabet as CEO, with fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin serving as president. Sundar Pichai, formerly Google’s vice president in charge of products, will serve as CEO of Google.
The new arrangement will see Alphabet, Inc. replacing Google as the publicly-traded company, Page said. Current shares of Google will be transferred automatically into shares of Alphabet; the company will remain listed as GOOG on the NASDAQ.
Read more Read TIME’s 2013 cover story, ‘Google vs. Death’
Here’s Page with more details on what Alphabet actually is:
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. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence.
In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We’ll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation. In addition, with this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.
Read next: Here’s Why Google Is Making the Titanic Shift to ‘Alphabet’
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