Google is a big company, in fact more of a sprawling empire. Actually Google as we know it is just one company inside a conglomerate of companies headed by ‘Alphabet’, the umbrella company.

Even ‘Google’ comprise Search, Maps, YouTube, Apps, Android, and related technical infrastructure, and then there are

Calico, Nest, GV, Verily, Access and Energy, Google Capital, Sidewalk Labs, DeepMind,and Google X and quite possibly a load more within the holding structure of Alphabet.

What do they all do? Limited information is revealed, but ‘Verily’ works on the smart contactlens and a wrist computer to read diagnostic nanoparticles injected into the bloodstream. ‘Calico’ is into anti-ageing research, ‘DeepMind’ is an artificial intelligence group [the one that beat world champion at ‘Go’], ‘Sidewalk Labs’ apparently wants to apply moonshot thinking to city life, and ‘Google X’ is where the self-driving car and robotics are created.

‘Access and Energy’ holds a division working on Google Fibre and is also home to the OnHub router and Titan drones.

Is there no end to what Google or rather Alphabet gets up to?, well no, there is still their cloud business, and their power-generating kit project known as Makani, and there are projects with names like project Wing, Replicant, and Loon. I have no idea what they do, but if you ever thought it was just a search engine company you now know that it is a far reaching and encompassing business with fingers in a great number of pies.

It may well mean that they have an effect on us apart from collecting details of our every day lives via their search engine, but hopefully it is for our benefit.

Sleep well.