Comment by lettergram
8 years ago
Most companies are broken up into separate entities. For instance, nearly 100% of the banks you interact with are more than one "company". You have mortgage, auto loan, credit cards, etc. The reason for this is liability and billing (same as Alphabet). They may even have different mottos and definitely different management. All that is to mitigate risk and work more effectively, but they are the same entitity owned by the same people, typically with the same driving factor or competitive advantage.
In the case of Verily and Google, however, they don't have the same driving factor or competitive advantage. Google's profits and business strategy revolve around advertising. Verily revolves around life sciences.
And where does Verily get the money to pay for its ventures?
Great question. I'll look into it later, but you should do the same. I'm fairly certain they have their own profit model, and don't cover all costs strictly from Google's advertising business.