Alphabet owns the Google search engine and trades under the ticker symbol GOOGL.
Alphabet became Google’s parent company in 2015, when Google reorganized its businesses under a new holding-company structure. Alphabet’s publicly traded Class A shares use the ticker GOOGL, while its Class C shares use GOOG and have different voting rights.
Google remains Alphabet’s best-known business, generating substantial revenue from search advertising. Alphabet also operates or has operated businesses in areas such as cloud computing, online video through YouTube, hardware, artificial intelligence, and experimental technologies.
The distinction between Google and Alphabet often causes confusion. Google is the main operating company and consumer brand, while Alphabet is the corporate parent and publicly listed group. Market capitalization calculations generally value the combined publicly traded share classes of Alphabet.