[nox101]

There's a difference

Meta owns Facebook so you can still talk about Facebook separate from Meta. Meta also owns Oculus

Alphabet owns Google so you can still talk about Google separate from Alphabet. Alphabet also owns Waymo.

X "is" Twitter. They aren't two separate things (a parent company and one of their subsidiaries) like the other two examples.

[dang]

Those are distinctions without a difference in popular usage. Alphabet may own Waymo but in most people's minds (or at least in my mind) it's all one thing and the name of that one thing is Google. Similarly for FB and Twitter. You can change a name on paper but that doesn't determine how people talk.

There's another interesting aspect: the original names Google/Facebook/Twitter are so much more expressive than Alphabet/Meta/X. The latter feel like constructs of some imperious baron on his march up the abstraction ladder, leaving the rest of us cold.

But I'm ranting now, sorry!