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Google's mixed record on moonshots means Alphabet could flunk |
SAN FRANCISCO — It is certainly an alpha bet.
Larry Page is stepping away from the Internet's biggest moneymaker to focus on moonshots, which is what Google calls speculative scientific bets that require a lot of capital and faith and frequently stray pretty far from the company's search-engine roots.
The move, which places Google into a larger parent company called Alphabet Inc., surprised investors. But it's in keeping with Page's contemporaries, from Amazon's Jeff Bezos to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who have all built moonshot factories of their own to keep an innovative edge and avoid the fate of many big tech companies: heft, maturity and eventual irrelevance.