Established to revolutionize education through technology, Socratic embodies Google’s commitment to innovation in the realm of learning and knowledge acquisition. This subsidiary’s journey from inception to becoming a valuable asset in education showcases the far-reaching impacts of Google’s diversified ventures. Fitbit, founded in 2007, swiftly became a household name by producing a wide range of wearable fitness devices that seamlessly integrate with users’ daily routines.

❓ Why Does Alphabet Inc Exist? Why Was Google Transformed Into Alphabet?

His calm demeanor, diplomatic style, and deep product knowledge helped him gain the trust of Google’s founders and board of directors. His promotion to CEO in 2015 marked the beginning of a more structured management era at Google. Geode Capital, companies owned by google a sub-adviser to Fidelity, holds around 1.8% of Alphabet’s equity. It manages a wide range of index portfolios, mainly through Class A shares.

Current and future subsidiaries under Alphabet have more autonomy to chase separate goals and enter new markets. Another move Google made into the cloud world was its purchase of Alooma in 2019. Alooma helps Google Cloud work more efficiently to provide its services to customers.

Mandiant

• Offering a platform for users to upload, share, and engage with videos, YouTube has unprecedentedly redefined entertainment, education, and communication.
• Alphabet has become one of the world’s largest technology conglomerates, with a market capitalization of $2.05 trillion as of Aug. 22, 2024.
• It has introduced features like “Waze Carpool,” a carpooling service that connects drivers and passengers in the same direction, promoting a more sustainable and efficient use of vehicles.
• Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) was originally founded as a search engine company in 1998 under the name Google Inc.

As of 2020, Android dominates the global market, with over 75% of all smartphones running Android. Mandiant is a cybersecurity firm that made headlines for uncovering cyber espionage by China in 2013. The company was acquired by Google in early 2022 with plans to integrate it into its Google Cloud division. With over 2.5 billion monthly users, 1 billion hours of video playback daily, and a video upload rate of 500 hours a minute has seen YouTube become a mammoth in the online video industry. Under the Google umbrella, YouTube expanded its business model and became part of the Google Adsense program, leading to more revenue for both creators and YouTube.

Companies Owned by Alphabet: An A to Z List

Page and Brin hold Class B shares, which carry 10 votes per share, compared to the single vote per share of Class A shares held by the public. This structure ensures that the founders retain significant control over Alphabet’s decisions, even as their ownership stake has decreased over time. Google’s control lies in the hands of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who wield significant power through their Class B shares. Larry Page served as the first CEO from 1998 until 2001, before handing over the role to Eric Schmidt, who served from 2001 to 2011. Eric Schmidt remained a major figure at the company, later serving as Executive Chairman. When Alphabet was formed, Page took over as CEO of the parent company, with Pichai leading Google.

Launched in 2004, Gmail revolutionized email with generous storage, threading, and powerful search functionality. It now supports smart replies, integrated tasks and calendar, and advanced spam filtering, serving billions of users worldwide. Google releases major OS updates, manages Google Play Store, and partners with hardware manufacturers to integrate its ecosystem, including Google Mobile Services. This structure ensures that the founders retain control even as the company grows and issues more shares to the public. While the founders hold the reins, institutional investors own the majority of Alphabet’s shares. These include asset management giants like The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and Fidelity Investments.

Who owns Google?

Its investment portfolio includes companies such as GitLab, Verve, Stripe, Bowery, Dapper Labs, Determined AI, and Nimble. It also sells brand advertising, which aims to enhance users’ awareness and affinity with brands. Advertising is thus a core part of Alphabet’s strategy and has guided many of its acquisition decisions, such as the purchase of DoubleClick in 2008 (see below). Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), the parent company of Google, owns several other companies in addition to the search engine giant.

Founded in 2009, Waymo is led by Co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, who took charge in April 2021. Waymo’s autonomous vehicle platform is currently in use in Arizona as part of a public robo-taxi service. The company has also partnered with Daimler to develop an autonomous driving system for commercial trucks.

These deals benefit Google and are also beneficial for the small startups that are acquired. Waze was acquired by Google in 2013 mainly as a means to eliminate rising competition and to incorporate the live traffic updates features into Google Maps. Looker simplified the data analysis process by making it readable and translating it into easy languages. Business owners no longer needed to invest in programming experts, which made the data analytics process more streamlined and efficient. Google bought Android from founder Andy Rubin in 2005 for a meagre $50 million.

But it only takes a couple of massive success stories, such as YouTube, Android, and DoubleClick, to make investors forgive and forget those fizzled efforts. So, Alphabet went back to the lab again, working up a new mobile hardware strategy. Two years later, the first Google Pixel phones showed up, developed by Alphabet but manufactured by various third-party hardware specialists. Apple (AAPL 0.55%) was reportedly working up the first iPhone in secret, and consumers hadn’t seen the first true smartphone yet. It would take entire books to cover all of Alphabet’s buyout history in detail, so let’s take a quick look at just a handful of important examples.

• DoubleClick is the largest provider of digital advertising services worldwide.
• Dropcam is a technology company that offers cameras and streaming devices that can be Wi-Fi operated.
• The line included phones, tablets, and streaming media devices, and Google was responsible for the design, marketing, development, and support of these devices.
• ” Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, told the crows at Alphabet’s annual meeting in 2017.
• The parent holds Google, its largest subsidiary, and several other companies.
• These deals benefit Google and are also beneficial for the small startups that are acquired.

Sidewalk Labs is an urban planning and infrastructure company whose mission is to address issues such as energy consumption, traffic congestion, and the high cost of living. In March 2017, Google Chief Scientist Fei-Fei Li announced that Kaggle and its community of  800,000 users would be joining Google Cloud. Looker initially offered a product that enabled teams with only a basic understanding of SQL to explore, save, and download data.

Google finalized its acquisition of Looker in 2020, leveraging its capabilities through the Google Cloud service. At Google Cloud, Looker helps customers accelerate their ability to analyze data, deliver business intelligence, and build data-driven applications. As of 2025, Sundar Pichai is the CEO of both Google LLC and its parent company, Alphabet Inc.. He first took over as CEO of Google in 2015 and became CEO of Alphabet in December 2019 when co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from executive roles.

While his stake is relatively small, his leadership role gives him significant influence over the company’s operations. Yes, Google is part of Alphabet Inc., which is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbols GOOGL (Class A shares) and GOOG (Class C shares). Originally acquired in 2014 and now branded under Google Hardware, Nest provides smart thermostats, security cameras, doorbells, smoke detectors, and home security hubs. Key features include camera-based translation, offline translation packs, and auto-detection. He initially worked on the Google Toolbar and quickly moved up the ranks to oversee the development of Google Chrome, which became the world’s most-used web browser. Over the years, he also led the teams responsible for Gmail, Google Maps, Google Drive, and Android.

The app fosters a sense of collaboration among its users, creating a network that actively contributes to improving navigation for everyone. Users are rewarded with points for sharing data and engaging with the platform, adding a gamified element that further encourages participation. Waze is a popular mobile navigation app that uses GPS to convey routes to users. The salient feature that set Waze apart from the rest of the competition was its live traffic updates feature that was generated through crowdsourced data over the internet. Looker is a computer software company that deals with data analytics and business intelligence software. The online platform allows users to collaborate with one another, enter data science and machine learning competitions, publish data sets, and explore the online data science environment.

One of the noteworthy aspects of the Google-Fitbit partnership is the potential for innovation at the intersection of wearable technology, health data, and artificial intelligence. Integrating Fitbit’s hardware prowess with Google’s data analytics and machine learning capabilities opens the collaboration to advanced health insights, predictive analytics, and personalized recommendations. Android’s story began in 2003, when it was founded by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White.