text: Perhaps Google (Alphabet?) should have googled its new name before it decided to restructure the whole company. 
   
   The New York Times reports that Google's new parent company, Alphabet, has encountered an issue with german automaker BMW, which owns a fleet services company with the same name and the domain Alphabet.com. 
   
   A spokesperson for BMW told the Times the company isn't planning on selling its domain and that Alphabet was a large part of its business. 
   
   See also: What Google has to gain by adopting the Alphabet 
   
   With the major restructuring announcement yesterday, Alphabet launched abc.xyz as its domain name. Alphabet, led by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is now the parent company of Google, a move designed to separate the core products (search, Gmail, Android, etc.) from its more far reaching projects (Fiber, Calico, X, self-driving cars). 
   
   While the move makes sense for Alphabet, it confused many. 
   
   BMW is looking into whether Google's Alphabet has infringed on its trademark, with no legal action currently planned. 
   
   Since the announcement, Alphabet.com has been down, likely due to the increased traffic it is undoubtedly receiving. 
   
   Other companies also have the Alphabet name. Reuters notes that more than 100 companies have trademark registrations in the U.S. that incorporate the word alphabet in some capacity. For example, Alphabet, Inc. is an Ohio company founded in 1965 that manufactures electrical components for the auto industry, according to Bloomberg. 
   
   Even the @Alphabet Twitter handle already has an owner. It belongs to a man named Chris Andrikanich, who is probably receiving a bit more attention than he's used to. 
   
   Well, that was an interesting way to end a Monday... — Chris Andrikanich (@alphabet) August 10, 2015 
   
   Y Combinator founder Paul Graham wrote a blog post saying it is an absolute must for companies to own the .com domain for their names just days before Google's announcement. While Graham says domains aren't as important for finding a company's online presence as they used to be, not owning the .com domain "signals weakness." 
   
   This might not prove to be an issue for the new Alphabet, however. Google founder Page said Alphabet wouldn't be introducing products under its own name, so it wouldn't be a public facing name like Google. 
   
   In any event, it's oddly comforting to know Google/Alphabet has the same problem many do when they're trying to purchase a domain for their own website. ||||| As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have. more 
   
   We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion users, like Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. And we haven’t stopped there. We are still trying to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about. 
   
   We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant. 
   
   Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet. I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President. 
   
   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. 
   
   This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google. A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. 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. I have been spending quite a bit of time with Sundar, helping him and the company in any way I can, and I will of course continue to do that. Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation—continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organize the world’s information. Recent launches like Google Photos and Google Now using machine learning are amazing progress. Google also has some services that are run with their own identity, like YouTube. Susan is doing a great job as CEO, running a strong brand and driving incredible growth. 
   
   Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure. 
   
   Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Our two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG. 
   
   For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google—the birth of Alphabet. 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! We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for! 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. 
   
   We are excited about… 
   
   Getting more ambitious things done. 
   
   Taking the long-term view. 
   
   Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish. 
   
   Investing at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see. 
   
   Improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing. 
   
   Making Google even better through greater focus. 
   
   And hopefully… as a result of all this, improving the lives of as many people as we can. 
   
   What could be better? No wonder we are excited to get to work with everyone in the Alphabet family. Don’t worry, we’re still getting used to the name too! ||||| Google has bought the alphabet. 
   
   Not literally of course (if that's even possible), but it has acquired the domain name abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com, just a few days after Google officially became a subsidiary of Alphabet, its new holding company. 
   
   The domain was created in 1999 and was updated on Wednesday when Google took control of it, according to domain database Whois. It is unclear how much it was bought for. 
   
   Read More from CNBC: Why Investors Like Google's Alphabet News 
   
   Google announced its restructuring in August in a bid to separate its core businesses such as search and Android from its "moonshots" like driverless cars. At the time, Google unveiled its website with a URL of abc.xyz. 
   
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   The purpose of the new domain is unclear given that the page did not load on Thursday morning. 
   
   "We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we're just being thorough," a spokesman for the company told media. 
   
   Google owns 18,095 other domains, data on Whois shows. It's the owner of Googl.com and Gogle.com, so if people misspell Google, they will still be redirected to the search engine. 
   
   Sometimes, companies will make defensive acquisitions of user names in order to prevent them being embarrassed in the future. The U.S. tech giant also owns the domain GoogleSucks.com. 
   
   Read More from CNBC: Alphabet to Back Symphony Messaging Tool 
   
   The change to Alphabet has caused Google some headaches when it comes to domain names. It does not actually own alphabet.com because it's currently owned by German carmaker BMW. A report in the New York Times earlier this year suggested that BMW does not want to sell it. 
   
   The news was first reported by DomainInvesting.com.
target: – Guess Google execs are serious about that whole reorg under the Alphabet parent-company thing. Just days after Alphabet officially became Google's holding company, it scooped up a brand-new domain name: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com, which has been around since 1999 and was purchased for an unspecified amount, NBC News reports. The page isn't functional as of this post, and a company rep says, "We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we're just being thorough." (Google set up that website in August.) It's hard to imagine Google directing the general public to use the site—would you want to type in all those letters every time?—and NBC notes the domain purchase may simply be a preemptive strike to keep others from usurping it for their own use. Two domains the company probably won't be able to get its hands on: ABC.com (for the American Broadcasting Company, owned by Disney) and alphabet.com, which BMW is unlikely to give up, notes Consumerist. If you'd been hoping to nab the domain for yourself, you can always try to cybersquat the site away when Google's hold on it expires in August 2018. (Alphabet has ditched its "Don't Be Evil" motto for one that's not as quirky.)