Earlier this month, Google announced through an online post by founder Larry Page the incorporation of Alphabet, a new holding company that would serve to house the various entities that make up the Google network of businesses, including Google Inc, Nest Labs, Calico, Google X, Google Capital and Google Ventures.
Published at the domain abc.xyz, the post outlined Page would now be serving as chief executive of the new company while co-founder Sergey Brin, who would from now on serve as president.
Since Google was first launched, Larry Page has shown his inner prankster through quirky doodles, elaborate April Fools’ jokes and a slew of Easter Eggs. And, despite the seriousness of his latest message, it still came with a sneaky touch of Google’s humour.
Embedded within the letter (in the period following ‘drone delivery effort’) is a link to to a satirical website for tech company HooliXYZ, which features on the HBO series Silicon Valley.
In the show, XYZ (a subsidiary of Google-like Hooli) is notorious for having outrageous ambitions but acheiving very little. And Google does a fantastic job of parodying this faux company.
“HooliXYZ is Hooli’s experimental division. The dream kitchen. The moonshot factory. The laboratory of possibility. The midwife of magic. The womb of wonders.”
And it goes on: “HooliXYZ = who? A select team of ‘XYZeniuses.’ They come from all over America and the world. From think tanks and Facebook and JPL Labs and Disney’s ‘Imagineers.’ The radical thinkers who are building not only the future, but the future’s future.
This group is led by beloved and universally distinguished Sole Head Dreamer Nelson ‘Big Head’ Bighetti, who was co-founder, principal innovator and chief visionary of Pied Piper. He is just three credits shy of an undergraduate degree in computer science from the University of Oklahoma. He owns a boat.”
So what exactly does HooliXYZ do?
“Self-driving cars? Flying cars? Self-flying cars? A space elevator? A cure for the AIDS virus? A non-polluting engine that runs on the AIDS virus? Are these things even possible? Well…at HooliXYZ, we are in active discussions about the long-term feasibility of these, as well as many other projects.”
