Investing 101: Googl Vs Goog

You might be asking yourself why Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google has two stocks with different tickers trading publicly. Could it be a mistake from Google's side? is my app glitching? let us look into it. The main difference between GOOGL and GOOG is that GOOGL shares have voting rights while GOOG shares do not.

GOOGL: Class A shares of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google. These shares have one vote per share and are entitled to elect members of the board of directors.

GOOG: Class C shares of Alphabet Inc. These shares do not have voting rights and are not entitled to elect members of the board of directors.

The creation of GOOG shares was a way for Alphabet to preserve the majority control of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page and Brin own a majority of Class B shares, which have 10 votes per share. By creating GOOG shares with no voting rights, Page and Brin were able to dilute the voting power of public shareholders without giving up any of their own control.

In terms of investment, the choice of whether to buy GOOGL or GOOG depends on your individual preferences. If you are interested in having a say in Alphabet's governance, then you should buy GOOGL shares. If you are more interested in simply generating returns from Alphabet's stock price appreciation, then you may be indifferent between GOOGL and GOOG shares.

In practice, the prices of GOOGL and GOOG shares are often very close to one another. This is because the market has already priced in the difference in voting rights between the two classes of shares. Thats it for today, until the next episode, cheers.