Alphabet Plans Sale, Spinoff Of Verily Unit, Executive Says

Alphabet Inc. has been working for the past two years to technologically decouple its life sciences unit Verily so that it can be sold or spun off, a senior executive testified Thursday.

Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security engineering, described the plans for Verily Thursday while appearing as a defense witness in the Justice Department’s case alleging Google illegally monopolized advertising technology.

Adkins said on the stand in federal court in Virginia that Verily, a sister company to Google under the Alphabet umbrella, has been working for the past two-and-a-half years to move off of Google’s own infrastructure and onto Google Cloud Platform.

“We are in the process of helping them become an independent company,” she said of the unit, adding that could either be through a sale or spinoff. “The idea is to have it no longer be an Alphabet entity.”

While Alphabet has long aimed to make Verily — which develops software and services to help health practitioners advance research and improve patient care — less dependent on Google, Thursday’s testimony marked the first time a Google executive has confirmed the plan to spin Verily off entirely as an independent company, separate from the Alphabet umbrella.

“At the end of 2024, we finalized a long planned separation to our own technical and operational infrastructure from Google, so that we can continue to grow as an independent company within Alphabet,” a Verily spokesperson said in an emailed statement, adding that they do not comment on non-public information.

The move comes as Alphabet’s other Bets — the division of high-risk projects now managed by President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat — have been pressured to become independent startups as part of an effort to run the conglomerate as a tighter ship.

“It’s no longer something we see as part of our core business,” Adkins said of Verily.

An Alphabet representative said in an emailed statement that the tech giant “plans to remain a significant shareholder while creating capacity for Verily to continue to bring in external investors.”

The discussion about Verily arose as part of an exchange about the technical feasibility of moving parts of Google from its proprietary infrastructure to the cloud. The Justice Department has asked the judge to force the company to sell its advertising exchange; Google argues a sale would be technologically difficult and harm customers.