Alphabet owns Google and became a separate holding company in 2015.
Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, announced the Alphabet restructuring in August 2015. Alphabet became the publicly traded parent company, while Google remained its largest subsidiary and continued operating its search, advertising, maps, YouTube, and Android businesses.
The structure separated Google’s core internet operations from other projects, including life sciences and research initiatives. Larry Page became Alphabet’s chief executive, and Sundar Pichai became Google’s CEO at the time of the reorganization.
Alphabet is not the same company as Google, although Google is its principal operating business. Alphabet’s market capitalization reflects the combined value investors assign to Google and the parent company’s other activities.