Tech

Alphabet's cybersecurity company Chronicle is merging into Google's cloud business

Key Points
  • Alphabet will move its enterprise security company Chronicle back into Google.
  • The company did a similar fold-in with smart home subsidiary Nest.
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud and formerly president of product development at Oracle, speaks at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Oct. 3, 2017.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet will fold its enterprise security company Chronicle into Google Cloud later this year.

Chronicle originally spun out of X, the company's experimental projects lab, and since January 2018 has been one of Alphabet's "Other Bets," which are Google sister companies aiming to produce the next big tech innovation.

In March, Chronicle released its first product, Backstory, which helps security analysts parse potential threats from anavalanche of alerts, helping them more quickly pinpoint the real vulnerabilities. In a crowded U.S. market for cybersecurity vendors, there are few existing ways for security teams to knit all of the data from their different products in a unified system.

The move comes more than a year after Alphabet folded its smart home subsidiary Nest back into the Google family.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is making wide-ranging changes to the group as he surpasses six months on the job. Earlier this month, Google bought data analytics provider Looker for $2.6 billion, Kurian's first big acquisition since the former Oracle executive replaced former Google Cloud leader Diane Greene.

"Threats posed by attackers to businesses, governments and organizations across the globe have only grown more sophisticated and urgent," wrote Kurian in a blog post. "At Google Cloud, our customers' need to securely store data and defend against threats—either in the cloud or on premise—is a top priority."

Chronicle will join Google Cloud in "the coming weeks," the company said, adding that the integration will happen this fall. It wasn't immediately clear whether Chronicle CEO Stephen Gillett will remain leading Chronicle.

In a Medium post about the move, Gillett looked back at the group's original goal.

At the core of our mission was the ability to look for the biggest way to have impact, and to bring the technology and services needed to "Give Good the Advantage." Our goal was centered around delivering a way to 10X the capabilities of security teams around the world who are struggling to stay ahead... Combining our efforts will allow us to take the next step on our journey, and will significantly accelerate our impact globally, together.

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