Alphabet’s main internet search engine is Google Search, a service central to its huge market value.
Google Search began as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. The founders incorporated Google in 1998, and the company grew by organizing web pages and ranking results using signals that helped users find relevant information quickly. Google later became part of Alphabet after a corporate restructuring in 2015.
Search supports a large advertising business. Companies pay to display ads beside relevant queries or across Google’s advertising network, while users generally access the core search service without a direct fee. Alphabet also owns businesses such as YouTube and Google Cloud, so its market capitalization reflects more than search alone.
Google Search is not the same thing as Google Chrome. Chrome is a web browser used to visit websites, whereas Search is the search service itself. Bing, operated by Microsoft, and Baidu, widely used in China, are separate search engines. Google’s search index and advertising systems have made the service one of the most influential products on the internet.