Yeah. As anyone at Google could tell you, they've been a familiar face at TGIF, and nothing more, for years.

At least at the operational level. I'm sure Sundar has had much contact with them. But regular Googlers certainly have not.

I've seen this explanation multiple times in this thread, but I find it incredibly hard to believe Alphabet was created to shift Sergey and Larry's time away from Google. It seems like there are far easier (and cheaper) ways of accomplishing this without creating a conglomerate.

Well, what they did is install a "CEO" for the main business, so they weren't operationally involved in that part of the business anymore and focused on different side businesses. Now the crown prince takes over everything operationally and the founders move to the board ... No idea if that was the primary plan, but certainly one of the options considered back then.