Alphabet is the company that owns the Google search engine.
Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created Alphabet as a new parent company in 2015. Under the restructuring, Google became Alphabet’s largest subsidiary, while other projects and businesses were placed into separate units. Sundar Pichai became Google’s chief executive in 2015 and later became Alphabet’s CEO in 2019.
Alphabet is one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies by market capitalization. Its businesses include Google Search, YouTube, Android, Google Cloud, and advertising services. The company’s stock-market value reflects investors’ valuation of the entire corporate group, not only the search engine.
A common mix-up is calling the parent company Google. Google remains the best-known operating brand, but Alphabet is the listed parent corporation. Alphabet’s share classes include publicly traded Class A and Class C shares, along with Class B shares carrying greater voting power.