Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alphabet Inc. was created through a restructuring of Google, completed on the 2nd of October 2015, to make the core Google business more accountable while giving greater autonomy to subsidiaries operating outside internet services. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin modeled the structure on Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, visiting Buffett in Omaha to study how a holding company with independent subsidiary CEOs could be managed.
Sundar Pichai has served as CEO of Alphabet since December 2019, also holding the CEO role at Google simultaneously. John L. Hennessy has been chair since February 2018. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin remain employees, board members, and controlling shareholders despite stepping down from executive roles.
Alphabet's subsidiaries include Google, Waymo (autonomous driving), Calico (human longevity), Verily (human health), Isomorphic Labs (drug discovery led by Demis Hassabis), GV (venture capital), CapitalG (private equity), Wing (drone delivery), Intrinsic (robotics software), and X Development (moonshot research). Former subsidiaries include Nest Labs, Chronicle Security, Loon LLC, and Sidewalk Labs.
Alphabet reached a $3 trillion market capitalization on the 15th of September 2025, becoming the fourth company to cross that threshold, behind Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple. Shares were up more than 32% for the year at the time.
Willow is a quantum computing chip unveiled by Alphabet on the 10th of December 2024. It solved a complex problem in five minutes that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe. The chip also reduces error rates in quantum computing and corrects errors in real time.
The United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet in October 2020, and a U.S. district court found the company guilty in August 2024, the first antitrust ruling against a U.S. company in 24 years; Alphabet has appealed. Alphabet also settled an antitrust case with France's Autorité de la concurrence for $270 million in June 2021, and Japan launched a separate antitrust probe in June 2021.