Alphabet was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and became the parent company of Google in 2015.
Google announced the Alphabet restructuring in August 2015, and the new holding company became effective in October of that year. Google remained the largest business inside Alphabet, while activities such as autonomous vehicles, life sciences, and other experimental projects were placed in separate subsidiaries.
The restructuring was intended to give each business greater independence and make financial reporting clearer. Sundar Pichai became Google's chief executive at the time, while Larry Page became Alphabet's chief executive and Sergey Brin became its president.
Alphabet is frequently listed among the world's most valuable companies by market capitalization because of Google's dominant search and online-advertising businesses, along with YouTube and cloud services. Google and Alphabet are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, but Alphabet is the corporate parent and Google is its principal operating company.