Alphabet is the parent organization of Google and was created in 2015.
Google’s founders announced the Alphabet restructuring in August 2015, and the new holding company became the publicly traded parent in October of that year. Google remained the largest subsidiary, while other businesses and projects were separated into distinct units.
The structure was intended to give greater independence to businesses such as Google’s internet services, Waymo’s self-driving technology, and Verily’s health-related work. Google itself continued to oversee products including Search, YouTube, Android, and Google Cloud.
Alphabet and Google are therefore not interchangeable corporate names. Alphabet is the parent company and stock-market entity, while Google is its most prominent subsidiary. Alphabet’s Class A shares trade under the ticker GOOGL, and its Class C shares trade under GOOG.