Alphabet completed its corporate restructuring in 2015, becoming the parent company of Google and several other businesses.
Google announced the new holding-company structure in August 2015, and Alphabet formally became effective on October 2, 2015. Under the arrangement, Google became a subsidiary focused on its core internet products, including Search, advertising, YouTube, and Android. Other ventures were placed in separate Alphabet units or subsidiaries.
Larry Page became Alphabet’s chief executive officer, while Sergey Brin became its president. Sundar Pichai became Google’s CEO and later succeeded Page as Alphabet’s CEO in 2019. The structure was intended to give individual businesses greater independence and make their operations and financial results easier to understand.
Alphabet is not simply a renamed version of Google. Google remains one of its subsidiaries, while Alphabet is the broader corporate parent. This distinction is also why Alphabet’s stock-market listings use the parent company’s name even though many of its best-known products still carry the Google brand.