Google's Australian employees were as surprised as everyone else to wake up on Tuesday morning and find they now worked for a company called Alphabet. 
However, after first checking the calendar to make sure it wasn't   April 1, they arrived at HQ, and were told to head to their usual beanbags ... everything is going to be just as it was yesterday.
The announcement from Mountain View had caught everyone on the hop. However, a quick assessment revealed that everyone working for Google in Australia on Monday worked for Google Inc, and everyone working for Google in Australia after the invention of the Alphabet holding company, still works for Google Inc. Google Australia and New Zealand boss Maile Carnegie's responsibilities and accountabilities remain unchanged and its locally based engineers, working on search, Google Maps and Chrome, all fall within the same Google Inc structure.
Initial instinct suggests that shuffling businesses around under new holding companies does not mean that questions about the opacity of Google ... sorry Alphabet's ... tax obligations will become any easier to unravel.
The sentiment seems to be that nothing is changing tax wise, with the clear message from the company being that this is all about giving clarity to investors about the performance of Google/Alphabet's myriad arms. These "new Google" arms include life sciences operation Calico, the Nest home automation business, futuristic research labs Google X, start-up investment arm Google Ventures, later stage tech company investment arm Google Capital and Google Fiber.
None of the divisions are operating in Australia yet, so despite the bemusement from one of the most unexpected announcements in recent times, it is pretty much "as you were" Down Under.