Alphabet owns Google and uses the ticker symbol GOOGL on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Google’s founders created Alphabet as a new parent company in 2015. The restructuring placed Google’s core businesses—such as Search, YouTube, Android, and advertising—under Alphabet while allowing newer ventures to operate more independently.
Alphabet has two widely discussed publicly traded share classes: Class A shares trade under GOOGL and carry one vote per share, while Class C shares trade under GOOG and generally carry no voting rights. Class B shares have enhanced voting power and are not publicly traded.
People sometimes refer to the entire group simply as Google, but the listed parent company is Alphabet Inc. The distinction matters when comparing the market capitalizations of the world’s largest companies, because Alphabet’s stock-market value includes Google and its other businesses. Alphabet is also the parent of Google DeepMind and several technology-focused projects.