Alphabet is the parent corporation created in 2015 to place Google and its other businesses under one holding company.
Google announced the restructuring in August 2015, and Alphabet became the publicly traded parent later that year. Google remained the largest operating company inside the new structure, while businesses such as research and investment projects could operate more independently.
The restructuring did not mean that Google disappeared. Google continued to contain major products including Search, YouTube, Android, and Google Cloud, while Alphabet reported the group through Google and other-bets categories.
Alphabet is sometimes confused with Google's original corporate name because the stock-market identity changed from Google Inc. to Alphabet Inc. The company's shares continued trading under the familiar GOOG and GOOGL symbols.