GOOG and GOOGL are the two ticker symbols of Alphabet company, which is the parent company of Google. The difference of price is very low as GOOG at https://www.webull.com/quote/nasdaq-goog is available at the rate of $1,319.04 while GOOGL is available at the rate of $1,314.76.Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided to split the shares of their company in order to retain the control of the company as much as possible. GOOGL belongs to the category of class A shares while GOOG belongs to class C shares. Class B shares are owned by the founder of the company and they have more right of voting in comparison to the shareholders who have class A shares.
Class Inequities
It was in April 2014 that Google has to split its stock into A and C shares. The number of shares increased to double the amount and the price was also dropped. People having class A shares have the right of voting while such a right is not available with the people having class C shares. If anybody has purchased class A shares at the time of split, he will also get equal number of shares of class C but there will not be any increase in the voting power. There are 298.3 million shares of class A and 47 million of class B shares. It means that total number of votes for class B shareholders is 470 million votes. It means that they have the voting power of 61%. People who want to have shares with voting rights need to buy class A shares. The class A shares are available with a little premium as it gives voting power to the shareholders.
People must be aware of the fact that the shares of class A and class shares have very little difference. Google has the plans of continuing the shares of class C, as it will help them in giving rewards to the employees. Nobody knows whether class C shares will be available at large discounts or not.
Class C shares
The class C shares were created in order to calm down the objections of stockholders who were objecting the original split of the shares. Google made a promise to the holders of class C shares that they will be compensated if the value of these shares will fall below 1% in comparison to the class A shares.
Class B shares
Till January 2015, the owners of the company Sergey Brin and Larry Page have 44.6 million shares Later they made an announcement of selling some of these shares In March 2015, the number of outstanding shares was 52 million and both the owners converted around 18.998 shares into class A shares and this was done by April end in 2015. This led to reduction in the control of voting of the company but investors bought a lot of shares. You can check more information at https://www.webull.com/newslist/nasdaq-goog.
Disclaimer: The analysis information is for reference only and does not constitute an investment recommendation.