Alphabet’s internet search engine, launched by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is Google.
Page and Brin developed the search engine while they were graduate students at Stanford University. Their early system was called BackRub because it analyzed the web’s backlink structure. Google was incorporated in 1998, and the name is commonly associated with the mathematical term “googol,” meaning 10¹⁰⁰.
Google’s search business became the foundation of a much larger technology ecosystem. The company expanded into advertising, web browsers, mobile software, cloud computing, hardware, maps, video, and artificial intelligence. In 2015, Google became the main subsidiary of a new holding company, Alphabet.
Alphabet is regularly ranked among the world’s largest companies by market capitalization. A common mix-up is treating Google and Alphabet as identical corporate names: Google is the principal operating subsidiary, while Alphabet is the publicly traded parent company. Google Search remains one of the web’s best-known services.