And just as important, it ads a layer of abstraction to Alphabet's P&L. "Google's" ad business has been declining but that gets obscured now under all these wonderful "startups" that Alphabet has "funded." It also allows Alphabet to fund and IPO everything new that they do - drones? That's a funding round and an IPO. Self-driving cars? That's a funding round and an IPO. Hmmm... Glass, a startup partially funded by Alphabet, is having a rough quarter due to adoption and its stockholders are getting hammered. Fortunately everyone who owns Alphabet stock still has the bounce from the Nexus 7's adoption by AT&T and T-mobile, which also partly covers Project Fi's anti-trust suit... Really, it's an acknowledgement that Google as a company had grown unwieldy and that they'd enjoy more tactical freedom by restructuring as an octopus. Now let's start a list of tech writers and investment pundits who totally fuck it up...