Alphabet owns the Google search engine and became a major trillion-dollar technology company.
Alphabet Inc. is the parent company created during Google’s 2015 corporate restructuring. Google remained the group’s largest business, while Alphabet placed other activities—such as certain research and investment projects—under a broader holding-company structure.
Alphabet’s public shares began trading under the new corporate structure in 2015. Its market capitalization grew with Google Search advertising, YouTube, cloud computing, and related digital services. The company passed the US$1 trillion market-capitalization mark in 2020.
A common mix-up is to call Alphabet simply “Google.” Google is the principal operating company and brand, while Alphabet is the publicly traded parent. Market-cap rankings generally list Alphabet because investors buy shares in Alphabet, not in Google as a separate publicly traded corporation.