Google has reinvented itself out of nowhere. No leaks. No warning at all. Alphabet takes its place as the entity that is publicly traded, run by Larry, Sergey, and Eric, and Google is now focused on being a great machine learning company.
The question on everyone's minds, is whether or not Alphabet+ will replace the beast that was Google+. G+'s circles methodology was game changing. I remember when I first tried it. It was like people, out there in the world, just letting data flow out from them to the Google+'s and all anyone had to do to tap in was reach out and grab on. It's like they say, if someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask where your seat is, you just get on.
And so here we are many years later. Lots of great lessons were learned ...
