Alphabet owns the Google search engine and is among the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
Alphabet became Google’s parent company in 2015, when Google reorganized its operations under a new corporate structure. The Google business remained the core operation, including search, advertising, YouTube, Android, and cloud services. Alphabet also groups several other activities, commonly called “Other Bets,” such as experimental technology projects.
Alphabet’s market capitalization is calculated from the value of its publicly traded shares. It has two major publicly traded share classes, Class A and Class C, with different voting rights; Class B shares are privately held and carry stronger voting power. This structure can cause confusion when people compare the tickers GOOGL and GOOG, but both represent Alphabet shares.