Alphabet, one of the world's most valuable companies by market capitalization, appointed Sundar Pichai as CEO in 2019.
Pichai had already led Google as its chief executive since 2015. In December 2019, Alphabet announced that its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were stepping down from their executive roles and that Pichai would lead both Google and Alphabet.
Alphabet was created in 2015 as a holding company for Google and several other businesses. Google remained the largest and best-known part of the group, including its search, advertising, YouTube, and cloud operations.
A common mix-up is to describe Pichai as Google's CEO only. Since 2019, he has served as CEO of Alphabet as well as CEO of Google, while Page and Brin retained board roles for a period.