Alphabet joined the $1 trillion market-capitalization club in January 2020.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, passed the threshold during trading on January 16, 2020. The valuation reflected Google’s dominant internet-search business, its digital-advertising operations, and investor interest in businesses such as YouTube and Google Cloud. Alphabet had created the corporate structure in 2015, making Google a subsidiary rather than the entire publicly traded parent.
A market capitalization is not the same as a company’s total economic value in every accounting sense. It is the market price of its outstanding publicly traded shares. Alphabet’s share structure includes different classes of stock with different voting rights, a detail that can cause confusion when comparing ownership and control.
Google began in 1998, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Alphabet’s best-known subsidiary remains Google, whose products include Search, Android, Maps, and YouTube.