Today, Google becomes Alphabet. Well, Google still exists, but Alphabet is the parent company, and Google is under that.
As you probably know, Google announced a new corporate structure, which included the birth of Alphabet, back in August. Larry Page becomes CEO of Alphabet, and Sundar Pichai becomes CEO of Google. Co-founder Sergey Brin is Alphabet’s President. The co-founders will oversee all of the companies under Alphabet, including Google, Fiber, Calico, Google Ventures, Google Capital, Google X, Life Sciences, and Nest. Most of Google’s well-known products (YouTube, Android, Gmail, etc. will remain under Google.
Google announced today on its Investor Relations site:
Google Inc. announced today that, pursuant to its previously announced plans to create a new public holding company, Alphabet Inc. (“Alphabet”), by implementing a holding company reorganization (the “Alphabet Merger”), it expects that the Alphabet Merger will close after the close of business on October 2, 2015. Google anticipates that shares of Google Class C Capital Stock and shares of Google Class A Common Stock will begin trading as Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and Alphabet Class A Common Stock, respectively, on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on October 5, 2015. Shares of Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and shares of Alphabet Class A Common Stock will continue to be traded under the same ticker symbols under GOOG and GOOGL, respectively.
You can read more about the new corporate structure here. You can also read a drunk redditor’s explanation if you prefer that version.