Alphabet owns Google and became one of the world’s largest firms by market capitalization.
Alphabet Inc. was created in 2015 as a holding company during a corporate restructuring led by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google became Alphabet’s largest subsidiary, while other activities were grouped under the “Other Bets” category.
Google’s search engine, advertising business, YouTube, Android, and cloud operations account for most of Alphabet’s economic importance. Because Alphabet is the publicly traded parent, its market capitalization reflects investor expectations for the entire group rather than Google search alone.
A frequent mistake is treating Google and Alphabet as two separate stock-market giants. Google is a subsidiary; Alphabet is the listed parent company. Alphabet has two major publicly traded share classes, and the combined value of those shares is used to estimate the company’s total market capitalization.