Alphabet is the parent company of Google and became a trillion-dollar company in January 2020.
Alphabet was created in 2015 as part of a corporate restructuring that placed Google’s core businesses under a new holding company. Google remained the best-known subsidiary, while Alphabet provided a broader structure for advertising, cloud computing, hardware, and experimental projects.
Alphabet’s market capitalization surpassed $1 trillion on January 16, 2020. The company’s value has been driven primarily by Google Search advertising, YouTube, Google Cloud, and the Android ecosystem. Market capitalization measures the value investors assign to all outstanding shares, not just the value of Google Search.
Alphabet is sometimes confused with Google because Google is its dominant operating company. The legal parent is Alphabet Inc., while Google LLC is a subsidiary. Alphabet’s stock trades under the symbols GOOGL and GOOG, representing different voting rights.