Google officially celebrated its 28th birthday on September 4, marking nearly three decades since Larry Page and Sergey Brin began building the search engine that would eventually become one of the world's most influential technology companies. But behind the familiar Google name is another story involving the company's parent organisation, Alphabet. When Alphabet was created in 2015, the restructuring was designed to place Google's core business alongside several other ambitious ventures under a larger corporate umbrella. The choice of the new name reportedly came down to a simple gesture between the two cofounders. Page had been involved in choosing the name Google, so he allowed Brin to select the name for their new parent company.

Page later summed up the decision by saying, “I chose Google, so [Sergey] chose Alphabet.” The name was not chosen randomly. Page explained that “Alphabet” represented a collection of letters that form the basis of language, while also connecting with Google's core business of organising and indexing information. The founders also saw a wordplay in “alpha-bet”, referring to investment returns above a benchmark. The creation of Alphabet reflected how dramatically Google had expanded beyond its original search engine. By then, the company had businesses and projects spanning areas such as advertising, YouTube, Android, cloud computing and experimental technologies. The restructuring allowed Google to remain focused on its core products while giving other businesses greater independence. Alphabet's structure was intended to let different companies and projects operate under their own leadership rather than having every initiative directly managed as part of Google.

The origins of Google itself also have an interesting naming story. Page and Brin initially worked on a search project known as BackRub while at Stanford. They later moved toward the name Google, inspired by “googol,” the mathematical term for the number represented by one followed by 100 zeroes. That name was meant to reflect the founders' enormous ambition: organising an immense amount of information available on the rapidly expanding internet. Nearly three decades later, Google's journey has gone far beyond web search. Its parent company now oversees a broad collection of technology businesses, while Google itself remains one of the world's most widely used internet platforms. The small story about Page letting Brin choose “Alphabet” therefore offers a glimpse into the partnership between the two founders and how a simple decision over a name came during one of the biggest structural changes in the company's history.