With Google being newly owned by Alphabet, many previously Google owned companies are being broken up and becoming their own company. One of those divisions that will now be it's own independent company is Niantic Labs.
Niantic Labs is responsible for the very popular game Ingress.
“Niantic Labs is becoming an independent company. We'll be taking our unique blend of exploration and fun to even bigger audiences with some amazing new partners joining Google as collaborators and backers. Niantic will be building on the success of +Ingress, which has been downloaded more than 12M times, has attracted more than 250,000 people to live events around the world, and has inspired users to collectively walk the distance from the earth to the sun while playing, exploring and discovering.”
You would assume Niantic Labs would become the “N” in the new Alphabet company, but Google will still remain a backer, along with upcoming partners. Niantic Labs sent an email to users stating that Google will start to send users data over to Niantic Labs on September 11, but users can opt out if they want to.
Source: Ingress (Google+)
