What is Alphabet?

Have you wondered about Google the company?  I use its search engine every day. So I went to the Alphabet site - it's the company that 'owns' Google.  Its domain name is www.abc.xyz. (They couldn't get the domain name of alphabet.com as it was taken by a BMW fleet management division). These founders are known to be creative and crazy.  Alphabet came about after Google, through a complicated restructure so that Google could be a subsidiary of Alphabet.  And Alphabet could get on with experimentation in all kinds of areas.  Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted Alphabet to be able to engage in a diverse range of activities.  Pictures of the pair show them as relaxed people with open smiles that have a little mischief showing, and often doing silly things for the photographer. We know about the Google car, so here are a few more: "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." Such an interesting pair to profile - CNET's article on them is HERE Do you know that both Page and Brin are "burners" - avid attendees of the "free-wheeling" art festival Burning Man?  I've covered this festival in the past. The theme for Burning Man 2018 is  "I, Robot".  Here is the introduction on the Burning Man website: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. — Isaac Asimov, I, Robot Along with developments in robots, there are a lot of events expected in 2018.  You can find theme HERE.  Many of these are outer-space related - for example the expectation of the first picture of a black hole and the launch of the transiting Exoplanet survey satellite. My pictures today apply the Flaming Pear India Ink filter first, and then Flexifly to get images that remind me of Escher's abstract drawings.