system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What's the deal with Google Inc and Alphabet Inc? Why a holding company?
gpt
It breaks up the financial burdens and responsibilites of the company making it possible for the company to engage in outside endeavours without endangering its core products.

Google is Google. However Google is becoming so big, that they can't manage everything under the Google branding without some level of additional headroom to cover everything, especially logistics for a company with 70 different departments.

So Alphabet controls its lesser products and R&D that has developed over the past few years that doesn't deal with the core product of Google. Things like Google Docs, Google Search Engine, Google Adwords... those are all still under the Google brand name.

However, products like Google Glasses for example, are lesser quality products that didnt take off, yet still provide a revenue base and need support. Thus, financial resources don't get diverted from the main company directly for Google Glasses, and legal concerns also stop with Alphabet Holdings instead of Google having to deal with it personally for every single project.