Alphabet owns Google and became one of the first major technology companies founded after 1990 to join the trillion-dollar club.
Alphabet reached a market capitalization of about $1 trillion in January 2020. The holding company had been created in 2015 to separate Google’s core internet businesses from a collection of newer ventures and projects. Google remained Alphabet’s largest and most important operating company.
Alphabet’s valuation is driven primarily by Google Search, advertising, YouTube, cloud computing, and related technology services. Its market capitalization therefore reflects investor expectations about many businesses rather than the value of the search engine alone.
Alphabet is sometimes incorrectly called Google in stock-market questions. Google is the principal subsidiary, while Alphabet Inc. is the publicly traded parent company. The distinction became important after the corporate reorganization that created Alphabet.