Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a corporate restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. The two founders of Google assumed executive roles in the new company, with Larry Page serving as CEO and Sergey Brin as president. Alphabet is the world's fourth-largest technology company by revenue and one of the world's most valuable companies.
The establishment of Alphabet was prompted by a desire to make the core Google internet services business cleaner and more accountable while allowing greater autonomy to group companies that operate in businesses other than Internet services. Page and Brin announced their resignation from their executive posts in December 2019, with the CEO role to be filled by Sundar Pichai, also the CEO of Google. Page and Brin remain co-founders, employees, board members, and controlling shareholders of Alphabet Inc.
When re-structuring, Larry Page talked about the new Alphabet and said:
Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. In addition, with this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.
Aquisitions
@Last Software
March 14, 2006
3D Modeling Software
2Web Technologies
June 1, 2006
Online Spreadsheets
60db
October 11, 2017
Podcasts
Aardvark
February 12, 2010
Social search
$50,000,000
Admeld
June 9, 2011
Online advertising
$400,000,000
AdMob
November 9, 2009
Mobile advertising
Adometry
May 6, 2014
Advertising
Adscape
February 16, 2007
In-game Advertising
$23,000,000
Agawi
June 18, 2015
Mobile application
Agnilux
April 20, 2010
Server CPUs
AIMatter
August 16, 2017
Computer vision
Akwan Information Technologies
July 19, 2005
Search Engines
allPAY
December 31, 2005
Mobile Software
Alooma
February 19, 2019
Big Data
Alpental Technologies
June 19, 2014
Wireless
Android
August 17, 2005
Mobile operating system
$50,000,000
Angstro
August 30, 2010
Social networking service
Anvato
July 8, 2016
Cloud computing
API.AI
September 19, 2016
Natural Language processing
Apigee
September 8, 2016
Application programming interface
$625,000,000
AppBridge
March 9, 2017
Software
Appetas
May 7, 2014
Web development tools
AppJet
December 4, 2009
Collaborative real-time editor
Applied Semantics
April 2003
Online Advertising
$102,000,000
AppSheet
January 14, 2020
Mobile application
Timeline
People
Further reading
Documentaries, videos and podcasts
Companies
Calico
Arthur Levinson
San Francisco
Biotechnology, Anti-Aging Therapeutics
CapitalG
Mountain View, California
Venture Capital
Chronicle
Stephen Gillett
Mountain View, California
Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing
DeepMind
Demis Hassabis
London
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Sundar Pichai
San Francisco
Advertising, Search Engine, Information Infrastructure
Google Fiber
Sundar Pichai
Mountain View, California
Internet Access
GV
David Krane
Mountain View, California
Venture Capital
Makani Power
Dr. Fort Felker
Alameda, California
Energy Production
Nest
Palo Alto, California
Home Automation, Internet of Things
Project Loon
Alastair Westgarth
Mountain View, California
Internet Connectivity
Project Wing
James Ryan Burgess
Palo Alto, California
Drone, Delivery
Sidewalk Labs
Daniel L. Doctoroff
New York City
Urban Planning, Smart City
Verily Life Sciences
Andy Conrad
San Francisco
Biotechnology, Software, Healthcare
Waymo
John Krafcik
Mountain View, California
Self-driving vehicles,
Automotive Industry
X (Company)
Astro Teller
Mountain View, California
Research and Development