Alphabet, a major market-cap company, is the parent company of Google.
Alphabet Inc. was created in 2015 through a corporate restructuring of Google. Google became Alphabet’s largest subsidiary, while other businesses and projects were placed under the wider holding-company structure. Google continues to operate products including Search, YouTube, Android, and Google Cloud.
Google began as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. The founders incorporated Google in 1998, and its search engine became influential because its PageRank system used links between web pages as an important signal for ordering results.
The relationship can cause confusion because people often use “Google” and “Alphabet” interchangeably. Google is the operating company and brand most users encounter; Alphabet is the publicly traded parent company. Alphabet’s stock-market presence is therefore tied to the performance of Google and its other businesses.