It's a line-item hack but I believe it's for a different purpose: investors are asking for more details on revenue and expenses of the various units. Splitting

It's a line-item hack but I believe it's for a different purpose: investors are asking for more details on revenue and expenses of the various units. Splitting the monolith Google into Alphabet + stuff provides line-items along "objective" lines that are still chosen by the company. One of the things people were anxious to see was the financials of YouTube. Guess who's not a separate "bet"?