Alphabet, Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate. It engages in the business of acquisition and operation of different companies. It was founded in 2015 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin through a restructuring of Google and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. As of 2021, Alphabet, Inc. has a market cap of US$1.866 trillion.
Alphabet, Inc. contains two segments, which are Google and Other Bets. It is most known for its Google segment, which includes Google services and Google Cloud. Amongst its Google services, products and platforms are Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Search, and YouTube. This Google segment offers cloud services and hardware, and Alphabet, Inc. generates the bulk of its revenue from Google’s advertising services.
Alphabet, Inc. is headquartered in Mountain View, California. In 2021, it has over 144,000 employees worldwide and over 70 offices in 50 countries.
Alphabet, Inc. Class A shares are listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker 'GOOGL' after its initial public offering in 2004. The company also provides Class C shares under the ticker ‘GOOG’. Shareholders of Class A have voting rights of one-vote-one-share while those of Class C do not.
The company is part of ‘FAANG’, an acronym used in finance technology that refers to the stocks of the Big Five companies in the US information technology industry: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. Institutional investors hold a majority ownership of Alphabet, Inc. Class A shares at 78.95%, with the largest shareholders being Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity, and SSGA. Co-founders Page and Brin remain controlling shareholders of the company.
