Alphabet is the publicly traded parent company that owns Google.
Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, reorganized the business in 2015 by creating Alphabet Inc. as a holding company. Google became Alphabet’s largest subsidiary, while other activities were grouped into separate businesses and projects.
Alphabet’s main operations include Google Search, YouTube, Android, Google Cloud, and advertising technology. The company has two principal publicly traded share classes, and its shares trade on the Nasdaq under the symbols GOOGL and GOOG.
A common mix-up is to call Alphabet itself “Google,” because Google remains the consumer-facing brand and the dominant business. In market-capitalization tables, however, the listed company is Alphabet Inc. Alphabet’s structure allows investors to value the corporate parent rather than treating Google as a separately listed company.