Alphabet Plans Sale, Spinoff of Verily Unit, Executive Says (2)

Alphabet Inc. has been working for the past two years to technologically decouple its life sciences unit Verily so that it can be sold or spun off, a senior executive testified Thursday.

Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security engineering, described the plans for Verily Thursday while appearing as a defense witness in the Justice Department’s case alleging Google illegally monopolized advertising technology.

Adkins said on the stand in federal court in Virginia that Verily, a sister company to Google under the Alphabet umbrella, has been working for the past two-and-a-half years to move off of Google’s own infrastructure ...