Any investor who has purchased or has considered purchasing shares of Alphabet Inc. (ticker: GOOG, GOOGL) in recent years has likely noticed there are two paths to take. Tickers GOOG and GOOGL both represent shares of Alphabet common stock, but they are two distinct share classes that have slightly different prices and attributes.
Most publicly traded stocks have only one class of common stock, but there are plenty of examples other than Alphabet of companies with multiple share classes. There are several reasons why a company might prefer multiple share classes, but the most common reason has to do with founders and company insiders maintaining control over the company.
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If you’ve wondered about the differences between GOOG and GOOGL and which stock is the better investment, here are some factors to understand and consider before buying:
— Why companies use multiple share classes.
— Differences between GOOG and GOOGL.
— Other examples of multiclass stocks.
— Which is the better investment, GOOG or GOOGL?
Why Companies Use Multiple Share Classes
One of the downsides for founders and insiders when taking a company public is the potential loss of control. When a company completes an initial public offering, its public shareholders become part owners of the company and insiders’ ownership stakes are typically diluted.
While some founders aim to maintain significant ownership of the company, their primary goal is often to maintain voting control. Each time a public company issues new shares, whether in an IPO or secondary offering, company insiders can lose more and more control over the company to dilution.
If a company is private, founders and executives can take it in any direction they want. In public companies, shareholders get to vote on key decisions, like electing board members and approving merger and acquisition deals. For most public companies, each share of common stock comes with the right to place one vote. In these cases, insiders would need to control more than 50% of the voting power to guarantee majority control.
Alphabet and other companies with multiple common stock classes often structure those classes so that some have more voting power than others. This allows insiders to hold shares that have more voting rights while selling shares with less voting rights to public investors.
With this approach, company founders and insiders can essentially dictate the important strategic directions taken by the company via greater voting power, even while owning less than 50% of the total shares.
Differences Between GOOG and GOOGL
When Google went public in 2004, the company created two classes of common stock. Google sold shares of its Class A stock to the public. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with other Google executives, retained Class B shares. At the time, each share of Google’s Class B stock held 10 times the voting rights of each share of Class A stock. This share structure allowed Alphabet insiders to maintain majority voting rights even if they did not maintain majority ownership of the company.
In 2014, Google underwent an unconventional stock split that created a third common stock class. Google completed a 2-for-1 split of its public Class A stock and created a new publicly traded share class, Class C stock, that had no voting rights. At the time, Page and Brin created this new stock class because they were concerned Google’s stock issuance related to acquisitions and executive compensation would eventually erode their majority control of Google’s voting rights.
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After the split, Google’s Class A shares that came with voting rights traded under the new ticker GOOGL. The new Class C shares that had no voting rights took over the GOOG stock ticker.
In 2015, Google restructured its business and changed its corporate name to Alphabet, but the restructuring did not affect the company’s three share classes. A subsequent 20-for-1 Alphabet stock split in 2022 did not change the company’s share classes or ownership structure either.
As of Jan. 28, Alphabet had 5.82 billion shares of Class A stock outstanding, 837 million shares of Class B stock outstanding and 5.44 billion shares of Class C stock outstanding. Due to the company’s incorporating documents, as well as Delaware law, all classes of stock are perfectly equal except with regards to voting, so the varying levels of shares outstanding don’t result in varying earnings per share for each class. As of the end of 2025, Page and Brin collectively owned more than 87% of the company’s Class B shares, and the two founders’ shares represent more than 51% of Alphabet’s total voting rights. That proportion is no coincidence, as it gives them the ultimate say in the company’s decision-making, so long as the two of them are on the same page.
For the average investor, there’s not much practical difference between owning shares of GOOG and GOOGL. Both share classes represent an equal ownership stake in Alphabet. GOOGL shareholders get voting rights associated with their shares and GOOG shareholders do not, but company insiders still control the majority of voting rights and can still override the votes of even a 100% consensus among Class A public shareholders.
The market doesn’t assign much value to Alphabet’s voting rights at this point. GOOG shares without voting rights usually trade at a price that closely follows GOOGL shares that have voting rights.
Other Examples of Multiclass Stocks
Alphabet isn’t the only popular public stock with multiple share classes.
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc. (META) has public Class A shares that trade on the Nasdaq exchange and Class B shares owned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several company insiders. Not surprisingly, the Class B shares come with 10 times the voting rights of the publicly traded Class A shares.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. also has two classes of publicly traded shares. Berkshire’s Class B shares (BRK.B) carry 1/1,500th the equity ownership of Class A (BRK.A) shares but only 1/10,000th the per-share voting rights.
Media giant Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) has Class A shares that trade publicly on the Nasdaq, but it also has Class B shares controlled by CEO Brian Roberts that represent 33.3% undilutable ownership in the company. In other words, no matter how many shares of CMCSA stock the company issues, Roberts will still control a third of the company’s voting rights.
Although the practice of having multiple classes of stock is increasingly common, it’s concerning from a corporate governance perspective, as it means an exceptionally small number of people can more or less run the company as they see fit — even if the vast majority of shareholders disagree.
Which Is the Better Investment, GOOG or GOOGL?
For the average retail investor mulling which class of Alphabet shares to buy, the answer at this point is simple: It really doesn’t matter.
Investors who want voting rights should buy Alphabet’s Class A GOOGL shares, but they should understand that those voting rights have limited potency, given that Page, Brin and other insiders still control a majority of the total voting rights. GOOG shares and GOOGL shares represent equal ownership stakes in Alphabet, and the two tickers should continue to trade in tandem over time.
In terms of which share class is the better investment, there is no enduring or meaningful long-term difference from a performance standpoint. As of March 25, GOOG shares were up 68.2% over the past year, while GOOGL shares were up 71.2% over the same period. In prior years, performance has been flip-flopped.
At the close of trading on March 25, the voting GOOGL shares were trading at a 0.5% premium to the non-voting GOOG shares. It makes sense for investors to simply buy shares of whichever class of stock is cheaper at a given moment in time, which currently gives GOOG stock a slight edge.
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GOOG vs. GOOGL: Why 2 Classes of Alphabet Stock? originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 03/26/26: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
