Alphabet is the parent company of Google, created in 2015 through a corporate restructuring.
Google announced the new holding-company structure in August 2015, and Alphabet became the public parent later that year. Larry Page became Alphabet’s chief executive, while Sundar Pichai became Google’s chief executive. The arrangement separated Google’s core internet businesses from several other ventures.
Google remained Alphabet’s largest and most important operating company. Other activities associated with Alphabet have included autonomous-driving technology through Waymo, life sciences through Verily, and investment operations. These businesses are commonly grouped under the idea of “Other Bets.”
A frequent mix-up is treating Alphabet and Google as identical names. Google is the subsidiary that contains products such as Search, YouTube, and Android; Alphabet is the broader publicly traded company whose shares represent ownership in the group.