Although everyone knows Google — the tech giant that revolutionized the internet — not many are aware it is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the third most valuable U.S. firm.
Here are eight things to know about Google's parent company, Alphabet.
1. Alphabet, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is basically a collection of companies — roughly 10 — all of which are referred to as "bets" with the underlying idea they each operate independently.
2. While each individual subsidiary has its own CEO, the head of Alphabet is Larry Page and its president is Sergey Brin.
3. The company was founded in 2015 after Google underwent a corporate restructuring. Alphabet created a more "slimmed down" version of Google so the internet search giant could pursue other efforts off-base from its original goals, Mr. Page wrote in a company blog post.
4. A number of Alphabet's spinouts — like its life sciences arm Verily — leverage data to drive success. At Verily, that entails collecting and analyzing health data to map the human genome, according to CNBC.
5. Other healthcare-related bets include include Sidewalk Labs, its urban planning subsidiary; Calico, an anti-aging business; and the Google-owned Google Brain, which is working on machine learning projects in health.
6. One of the bets, X Lab, is focused on "moonshots," or ideas Alphabet believes could change the future. X Lab is responsible for exploring driverless cars, delivery drones, wifi-emitting balloons, Google Glass, and a spoon for patients with Parkinson's disease, according to CNN Tech.
7. Alphabet's most well-known entity, Google, is still in charge of Android, Search, Apps, Maps and YouTube.
8. Alphabet reaped more than $110 billion in revenue in 2017.
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