Alphabet is the parent company that owns Google and has ranked among the world's most valuable companies by market capitalization.
Alphabet was created in 2015 through a corporate restructuring that made Google its largest subsidiary. The change separated Google's core internet products from other ventures, including research and businesses placed in the company's “Other Bets” group.
Google remains Alphabet's central business, with products such as Search, YouTube, Android, and Google Cloud. Online advertising has historically supplied most of Google's revenue, while cloud computing and subscriptions have become increasingly important.
Alphabet's market capitalization reflects expectations for the entire corporate group, not just the Google search engine. A frequent mistake is to call Alphabet “Google” in a corporate ownership question: Google is the subsidiary and brand family, while Alphabet is the publicly traded parent company.