Alphabet was created in 2015 to reorganize Google and its expanding businesses.
Google announced the new corporate structure in August 2015, and Alphabet Inc. became the successor holding company later that year. Google’s core internet businesses, including Search, advertising, YouTube, and Android, became subsidiaries of Alphabet, while other projects could operate more independently.
Larry Page became Alphabet’s chief executive and Sergey Brin became its president at the reorganization. Sundar Pichai took over as Google’s CEO and later became Alphabet’s CEO in 2019. The structure was intended to give the main internet business greater focus while allowing experimental ventures to develop separately.
Alphabet is regularly included among the world’s richest companies by market capitalization. It is not the same legal entity as the original Google Inc., although Google remains the best-known operating company within the group. The corporate change also led to a new stock ticker: GOOG and, later, GOOGL for different share classes.