Alphabet owns Google and changed its corporate name to Alphabet in 2015.
Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, announced the new parent-company structure in August 2015. Alphabet Inc. became the publicly traded parent, while Google became its largest subsidiary. The restructuring separated Google's core internet products from newer or more experimental businesses, including units associated with health, longevity, and investment projects.
Alphabet remained one of the world's most valuable public companies because of Google's dominant search business and its large advertising network. Other important operations include YouTube, Google Cloud, Android, and hardware products. Investors value the parent company by looking at its total outstanding shares and share price.
The name change did not mean that Google disappeared. Google continued as a major operating company inside Alphabet, and its familiar products kept their existing names. Alphabet's stock retains Google's original Nasdaq ticker symbols, GOOG and GOOGL.