Announcing the move on Google’s website, Mr Page said: “We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes”.

He writes: “Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence”.

Alphabet will of course be run by the co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two will be CEO and President of Alphabet respectively while Sundar Pichai will step up to the role of CEO of Google. Google shares will be converted into equivalent stock holdings in Alphabet, with the same rights – or lack of them.

Google shares have risen by about 4.1% on Wall Street after investors welcomed news of its restructuring. There’s every indication that this means Google+ will also continue to reside within Google, rather than be spun-out as a separate Alphabet company.

Each subsidiary will be independently managed, rendering the business structure “cleaner and more accountable”, he explained.

While Google is known as the dominant player in Internet search, it has launched a variety of projects in recent years that are marginally related at best to its core operation. Sundar Pichai, Google’s former product chief, has been appointed as CEO of Google.

Google CEO Larry Page will become CEO of the new entity, with his co-founder Sergey Brin serving as president.

Other research divisions and the smart home business Nest will now run under Alphabet. The search giant has been ratcheting up its financial investments into healthcare, which consumed more than a third of its total Google Ventures investments in 2014.

In his post, Page said that the company will “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”. While all of these tech companies began as entities focused on one main business, online bookselling or a social network, for example, many have diversified over the years into numerous side businesses including cloud computing, photo sharing and even satellites.

BMW is looking into whether Google’s Alphabet has infringed on its trademark, with no legal action now planned. The search engine, YouTube, Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Maps and Android will all remain the same (barring the usual updates and changes we’re used to apps getting) and keep the same names.