Alphabet is the parent company of Google and became one of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Alphabet was created in 2015 as part of a corporate restructuring. Google became its largest subsidiary, while other businesses and projects were grouped under the new holding company. Sundar Pichai became Alphabet’s chief executive in 2019 after previously leading Google.
Google’s search engine, advertising systems, YouTube, Android, and cloud business provide the main economic foundation of Alphabet. Investors value the parent company through its publicly traded shares, so Alphabet’s market capitalization reflects expectations about these operations and its other ventures.
Alphabet is sometimes confused with Google because Google remains the best-known brand within the group. The stock ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL represent Alphabet share classes, not a separately listed Google corporation.