Alphabet is the parent corporation of Google and became one of the world’s trillion-dollar companies.
Google created Alphabet in 2015 as part of a corporate reorganization. Under the new structure, Google became a subsidiary focused on major internet products such as Search, YouTube, and Android, while Alphabet became the publicly traded parent company.
Alphabet’s market capitalization is based on the combined value of its publicly traded shares. Its valuation has been driven primarily by Google’s advertising business, along with cloud computing, YouTube, hardware, and investments in other technologies.
A common mix-up is to call Alphabet itself “Google.” Google remains the best-known operating company inside the group, but Alphabet is the legal parent whose shares trade under the ticker symbols GOOGL and GOOG. The restructuring also separated Google’s core business from longer-term projects known as “Other Bets.”