Alphabet reached a $1 trillion market capitalization in January 2020 under its parent name, Alphabet.
Alphabet is the holding company created in 2015 when Google reorganized its businesses. Google remains Alphabet’s largest subsidiary, while the corporate structure also includes businesses and projects such as Waymo and Verily.
The trillion-dollar milestone showed how strongly investors valued Google’s search engine, online advertising network, YouTube, and cloud business. Alphabet’s share-price performance is closely tied to advertising demand, because advertising has historically supplied most of its revenue.
Alphabet is often mistakenly called Google in market-cap comparisons. Google is the operating company and best-known brand, whereas Alphabet is the publicly traded parent whose shares investors buy. Another possible confusion is the milestone’s timing: Apple and Amazon reached $1 trillion in 2018, while Alphabet crossed it later, in early 2020.