Who owns Gmail?
Gmail is owned by Alphabet (the United States, NASDAQ: GOOGL).[1]
Evidence: Alphabet Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-02-05, SEC EDGAR, 5 February 2026. Verified from filings; last checked .
Key facts
- Current owner
- Alphabet Inc. verified
- Owner HQ
- 🇺🇸 United States, Mountain View, California
- Origin
- 🇺🇸 United States
- Founded
- 2004
- Category
- Internet & digital › Digital services › Email & messaging
- Parent ticker
- NASDAQ: GOOGL
- Last verified
- · 1 sources
About Gmail
Gmail launched on 1 April 2004 offering a gigabyte of storage when rivals offered a few megabytes, which was so far beyond the norm that many people assumed the announcement was an April Fools' joke. It is now among the most used email services in the world.
What Alphabet's annual report says about Gmail
Sentences about Gmail from Alphabet's latest annual filing[1], copied word for word.
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How often Alphabet names Gmail in its annual report
A plain count of the times the name appears in the text of each annual report, not counting the start of a sentence. A brand that an owner writes about more is usually one it treats as central. The brand is named less often than it was three years earlier.
Ownership timeline of Gmail
Where Gmail sits in Alphabet
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Alphabet ownership tree →
See the full Alphabet brand portfolio (13) →
Other brands owned by Alphabet
Alphabet controls 13 brands on Brandtree, 13 of them in internet & digital.
Also in internet & digital
- Android (2003)
- Fitbit (2007)
- Google Chrome (2008)
- Google Cloud (2008)
- Google DeepMind (2010)
- Google Maps (2005)
- Google Nest (2010)
- Google Play (2008)
- Google Search (1998)
- Waymo (2009)
- Waze (2008)
- YouTube (2005)
Other brands in email & messaging, and who owns them
The 18 brands in email & messaging on Brandtree belong to 14 owners. The largest is Snap, with 2.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Messenger | Meta | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Firefox Relay | Mozilla | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Bitmoji | Snap | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Mail.ru Email | VK | 🇷🇺 Russia |
| Yahoo Mail | Apollo | 🇺🇸 United States |
| KakaoTalk | Kakao | 🇰🇷 South Korea |
| LINE | LY Corporation | 🇯🇵 Japan |
| Skype | Microsoft | 🇺🇸 United States |
About the owner: Alphabet
Alphabet is a publicly listed company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States, founded in 1998. Brandtree records 13 brands under its control, and it is listed as NASDAQ: GOOGL.
Alphabet was created in 2015 as a holding company above Google, separating the search and advertising business from ventures such as Waymo and Verily. Google itself was founded in 1998 by two Stanford graduate students, and advertising against search results still produces the overwhelming majority of the group's revenue.
🇺🇸 Gmail and other American brands
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,549 brands that began in the United States. 478 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country; Gmail is not one of them.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the parent company of Gmail?
The parent company of Gmail is Alphabet, a publicly listed company headquartered in the United States.
Is Gmail American?
Yes. Gmail originated in the United States in 2004 and its owner, Alphabet, is also headquartered in the United States.
Is Gmail still owned by Alphabet?
Yes. As of 9 October 2026, Gmail is still owned by Alphabet. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Sources (1) & corrections
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
- [1] Alphabet Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-02-05 — SEC EDGAR, SEC Form 10-K, published 5 February 2026; retrieved 16 September 2026.
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