Alphabet reached a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2020, becoming the fourth U.S. company to do so.
Alphabet crossed the milestone on January 16, 2020. Alphabet is the parent company of Google, whose advertising business supplied most of the group’s revenue at the time, while YouTube, cloud computing, and other businesses contributed additional growth.
The earlier U.S. trillion-dollar companies were Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Alphabet’s achievement therefore marked another stage in the rise of large technology companies within global stock markets.
Alphabet was created in 2015 through a corporate reorganization. Google became its largest subsidiary, while the holding-company structure separated Google’s core internet products from several other ventures. Alphabet’s market value can rise or fall independently of Google’s brand recognition because investors value the publicly traded parent company, not Google as a separate listed stock.