Google's founders visited Warren Buffett more than a decade ago - and were so inspired they modeled Alphabet on Berkshire Hathaway
AP Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down as heads of Alphabet in 2019. The pair had the idea for Alphabet - a holding company that houses Google, DeepMind, Waymo, and other businesses - while visiting Warren Buffett more than 10 years ago. "The genesis of Alphabet is a meeting that Larry and Sergey and I had about a decade ago where we flew - technically, I flew them, shocking - to Omaha, and we visited Warren Buffett," former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at Alphabet's annual meeting in 2017. Following Berkshire Hathaway's formula of trusting managers to run its businesses, Alphabet built a "corporate scaling mechanism that we've never seen in the world," Schmidt said. View Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down as heads of Alphabet in 2019. They had the idea for the holding company - created in 2015 to house Google, DeepMind, Waymo, and other businesses ...