Class B shares have a ten-vote-per-share value and are held exclusively by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as other insiders; these shares are not publicly traded. “Obviously, we see AI as a foundational platform shift and are excited about opportunities across our business. It starts with search,” Pichai answered. “And I’ve been pretty pleased with how the user feedback has been on SGE,” adding that it is generating value for its ecosystem of products. For the third quarter, Alphabet reported revenue growth of 11%, returning to double digits for the first time in more than a year.
- He still made regular appearances at the company’s all-hands meetings and could be found wandering various parts of the Googleplex campus alongside Brin.
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin own about 14% of Google’s publicly listed shares and 56% of the company’s super-voting stock.
- With YouTube, Pichai said AI is showing better performance and profitability for advertisers and giving them more help.
- The fallout was a rare but highly visible blot on Brin’s career, although his holdings in the company would have prevented any attempt to oust him.
So she moved fast to buy it while Google still had an upper hand at the negotiation table. “I saw an opportunity to combine the two services,” Wojcicki recalled in venture capitalist John Doerr’s book Measure What Matters. ”I worked up some spreadsheets to justify the $1.65 billion purchase price… And convinced Larry and Sergey.” Sounds like listening to Wojcicki was a smart decision, discounting of course the never-ending YouTube controversies of late. Just a few years after hiring Schmidt, Google was on a fast-moving rocket to the upper echelon of not just the tech industry, but the broader American business landscape. It filed for an initial public offering, which took place in August of 2004 and raised $1.7 billion, giving Google a valuation of $27 billion.
Top Google Individual Shareholders
Alphabet is constantly looking for novel technologies that can enrich its portfolio of businesses. Acquiring smaller companies often eliminates emerging rivals, thus reducing competition for Alphabet. This is one reason Alphabet is currently the target of an antitrust lawsuit that was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and eleven state Attorneys General in October 2020.
In February, Wojcicki — one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley — announced that she was stepping back after nine years at the helm of the Google-owned platform that grew to be the world’s most popular video service. She had been at Google for more than 25 years, after famously lending her garage to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to use as their first office. Executives from other smaller search engines, like DuckDuckGo and Neeva also testified that Google’s exclusive deals effectively quashed their potential to gain market share. “Insider” https://1investing.in/ refers to people in senior management positions and members of the board of directors, as well as people or entities that own more than 10% of the company’s stock. Sundar Pichai, in full Pichai Sundararajan, (born June 10, 1972, Madras [now Chennai], Tamil Nadu, India), Indian-born American executive who was CEO of both Google, Inc. (2015– ), and its holding company, Alphabet Inc. (2019– ). Sundar Pichai is an Indian-born American computer scientist and executive who is CEO of both Google, Inc. (2015– ), and its holding company, Alphabet Inc. (2019– ).
GOOGL shares make up 2.3% of the fund’s portfolio and GOOG shares represent 2.1%, both among the fund’s top 10 holdings. When talking about the ownership of Google and YouTube together, the answer is- both the companies, YouTube and Google are owned by Alphabet Inc., a holding company that was created in 2015. Alphabet is the parent company of many other technology companies, including Google Cloud, Calico, CapitalG, GV, Verily, Waymo, and X. Over several years, Vanguard has steadily accumulated a total of more than 44 million Alphabet shares within its various funds, including the highly popular Vanguard Communication Services ETF (VOX).
You can also find her cooking, making singing videos, or walking on quiet streets in her free time. With its spirit to never stop, Google has created several breakthroughs like quantum supremacy, AdWords, Android, self-driving cars, ethical AI, and much more, and has continued redefining our world. The way Google navigates challenges and innovations, it always remains at the forefront of technological advancement, which impacts how we work, connect, and explore the ever-expanding digital landscape. Thus, we can say since Google was founded in 1998, it has become one of the world’s most influential and widely recognised companies. Maybe that is why we say “Google it” to someone whenever they have a query and we don’t have an answer.
Who are Google’s Directors and Executive Officers?
Larry’s sometimes unorthodox moves, like firing all the product managers in 2001, understandably scared them off. Larry Page founded Google in 1998 together with its co-founder SergeyBrin. The core product was the commercialization of their “PageRank” web ranking algorithm Larry and Sergey developed together at Stanford University during their Ph.D. studies. However, keep in mind that a stake in Alphabet could be just one part of their portfolio, and their total worth could be bigger, thanks to other investments. The following table summarizes how much is each shareholder’s stake in Alphabet Inc. worth. Other Alphabet insiders that have influence over the Company are CEO Sundar Pichai, chairman of the board John L. Hennessy, and other board members and executives.
Did someone say YouTube?
Brin is currently the shareholder with the second-largest stake of Alphabet Class C shares, holding approximately 38.9 million shares. Check out the top 5 Alphabet shareholders who are also known as the owners of Google. Three of these shareholders are institutional investors and the other two are individuals. Google has since been able to monetize the service by selling ad services to businesses, including ads that alert drivers when they are near participating businesses.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, are also one of the largest Alphabet owners. The two largest Alphabet (Google) owners are asset management giants Vanguard, which owns a 7.0% share, and BlackRock, with a 6% share. If you are interested, you can check my other articles about how Google makes money from Android and Google Maps. I also made a deep dive into what companies Alphabet owns and how the whole holding is organized. Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he initially worked on the Google Toolbar, a browser extension.
It is no surprise then that it is still owned by a variety of individuals and institutions, most notably Alphabet Inc., its parent company. Since joining Google, Sundar Pichai has proved to be a pivotal figure in its transformation into one of the most successful technology companies today. His implementation of innovative products has enabled Google to expand its worldwide presence. With his knowledge of technology coupled with savvy business strategy, he has brought many ideas to fruition while simultaneously prioritizing customer service. “We are creating a corporate structure that is designed for stability over long time horizons. By investing in Google, you are placing an unusual long term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me, and on our innovative approach,” Page wrote.
Sergey’s history is quite interesting as he immigrated to Russia at six years old. After he and his co-founder created Google, they became billionaires when the firm gained pace as the best search engine globally. Larry Page is one of the co-founders of the firm, which was conceived while studying at Stanford University. He partnered with his fellow at the university for a dissertation, which bore the search engine giant. Without a doubt, Google, under parent company Alphabet, is a technology giant, with vast interests in numerous areas.
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Susan Wojcicki was the 16th employee at Google and the person whose garage the company was literally started out of. That meant she often had the confidence of Page and Brin, but it did take some convincing on her part to get Google leadership to approve the the landmark $1.65 billion acquisition of an online video site called YouTube. One of Page’s most prescient business calculations was the rise of mobile computing, and he moved quick to snap up a small startup by the name of Android in the summer of 2005 to the tune of $50 million. He did so without telling Schmidt, who was then still CEO, because Page believed so strongly that Android co-founder Andy Rubin could help the company make inroads in the mobile software market. But early engineer and future Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was once quoted as saying early engineer Amit Patel wrote it on a whiteboard in 1999.
Despite this myriad of products, its original search tool remains the core of its success. In 2016 Alphabet earned nearly all of its revenue from Google advertising based on users’ search requests. Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment management companies with about 440 low-cost traditional funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Vanguard is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company and has about $7.2 trillion in global assets under management (AUM). The Vanguard Communication Services ETF (VOX), with $4.6 billion under management, is one of many Vanguard funds holding Alphabet shares.
It is owned by Google and is the second most visited website, after Google Search. Since then, YouTube has grown into a global phenomenon with over 2.5 billion active users. It is the second most visited website in the world, after Google Search. YouTube generates billions of dollars in revenue each year, mostly from advertising.
Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler explained that the YouTube features let people create content in multiple languages and remix videos, adding, “we’re just getting started.” “On the first part of our SG, we are still very early days in terms of how much we have rolled it out,” Pichai responded. “But we have definitely gotten it out to enough people and both geographically across user segments and enough to know that the product is working well.”
The two co-founders of Google continued to remain as controlling shareholders, board members, and employees at Alphabet. YouTube was founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees who believed that ordinary peopled would enjoy sharing their homemade videos online. By the summer of 2006, YouTube was already offering more than 100 million videos per day. Both technical problems that accompany rapid growth and lack of commercial success prompted YouTube to begin searching for a buyer. DoubleClick was founded in 1996 and became one of the stock-market stars of the dot-com era as a leader in the first generation of online advertising during the 1990s.
But, you might understandably ask, wait a minute, founders also own class C shares without voting rights. This way, they can liquidate up to 50% of their shares (all class C shares) without decreasing their voting power at all. If founders make some provision beforehand, their voting rights can be transferred in case of their death to other class B shareholders.