Great to see Google splintering off into single duty compartments instead of spreading itself so thin that nothing gets done with the same amount of focus. Alphabet was a true design decision, and a mature one at that. One thing that crossed my mind recently was the notion of Google and its long relationship with hardware: we have this thing called the Blockchain now, and it could do with some of Google's hardware to run on, instead of independent factions of people spending their pocket money on their own hardware. It kind of makes me jealous and annoyed that so much could be spent for what effectively is sometimes just a data center for storing people's holiday snaps on Google Plus, when it could be used to host micro democracies and change the direction of finance. I suspect all that hardware will eventually be re-purposed many times throughout the course of the Google experiment and probably will eventually be given away at some point to the blockchainers who need it. I can picture the scene: dreadlocked decentralists rejoicing at their new hardware gift from Google, 25+ years from now. The ultimate redemption from their years of slavishly handing their personal information over to Google in exchange for a decent search experience. A true revenge for consumers of Google. Meanwhile Google would have entirely switched to SSDs and are probably using post-quantum chips, but at least we can host multiple different blockchains now without spending our pocket money on them. The blockchainers can start to get rich and blockchain can really flourish. Also, Google needs to create services which are for a post Snowden world. Allo is cute, but entirely inferior to things like Signal which addresses the problem of encrypted private chat head on. Google needs to create things like its own VPN service, perhaps?