Google: Conglomerates are back in fashion, but only the best will thrive
FEW management fashions have waxed and waned quite as dramatically as that for conglomerates. From the 1960s to the 1980s business gurus praised conglomerates such as ITT of America and Hanson Trust of Britain as the highest form of capitalism. Today they routinely dismiss them as bloated anachronisms.
.. A tech blogger has quipped that Alphabet is “Berkshire Hathaway for the Burning Man crowd”. Indeed, Mr Page has acknowledged that he looks to Berkshire as a model of how to run an increasingly diversified company.