Alphabet became the parent company of Google and its other businesses in 2015.
Google announced the corporate restructuring in August 2015, and Alphabet Inc. became the successor to Google Inc. as the publicly traded parent company in October of that year. Under the new structure, Google remained the largest subsidiary, while other ventures could be managed more independently.
The change did not mean that Google disappeared. Google continued to include major products such as Search, YouTube, Android, and Google Cloud, while Alphabet held those operations alongside businesses and projects outside Google’s core internet products.
Alphabet’s creation is sometimes confused with Google’s founding date. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998, six years before the company’s 2004 initial public offering. Alphabet was created much later as a corporate reorganization intended to provide clearer reporting and management boundaries.