Alphabet owns the Android operating system and is the parent company of Google.
Alphabet was created in 2015 through a corporate reorganization of Google. Google became a subsidiary, while Alphabet became the publicly traded holding company for Google and several other businesses and research projects.
The structure separated Google’s core internet businesses from so-called “Other Bets,” which have included activities such as self-driving technology and life sciences. Alphabet’s market capitalization is therefore the market value investors assign to the whole corporate group, not only to the Google search engine.
Alphabet’s stock trades under the symbols GOOGL and GOOG. The two classes differ mainly in voting rights: GOOGL shares generally carry voting rights, while GOOG shares generally do not. Both represent ownership in Alphabet and are included in market-value calculations.