Who Owns Google? Largest Alphabet Shareholders

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Alphabet Inc., the holding company that owns Google, is a public company owned by its shareholders, but control sits with Google’s co-founders. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the largest individual shareholders. Their stakes are almost entirely in class B shares, which carry 10 votes each and do not trade, so together they control a majority of the shareholder vote while owning a much smaller share of the company’s total equity. Among institutions, the largest holders are Vanguard, BlackRock and FMR (the parent of Fidelity) in the class A shares, with JPMorgan Chase taking third place in the class C shares.

How Alphabet’s share classes divide ownership and control

The question of who owns Google has two answers, depending on whether you count economic ownership or votes. Alphabet’s share structure is designed to separate the two.

Class B shares convert into class A shares, one for one, and generally convert automatically when an insider sells or transfers them outside a narrow set of permitted transfers. That conversion rule keeps the 10-vote stock in insider hands: once it leaves, it becomes ordinary one-vote stock. Because class B shares never trade, they have no quoted market price, and estimates of their value use the price of the listed classes.

The structure dates to Google’s 2004 IPO, when the founders set up a dual-class system to keep control as the company raised public capital. In 2014 Google added the nonvoting class C shares through a stock dividend, which let the company issue stock for employee pay and acquisitions without diluting the founders’ voting power. In 2015 Google reorganized into Alphabet, with Google becoming the largest of several subsidiaries under the new parent; the GOOG and GOOGL tickers carried over. A 20-for-1 stock split in 2022 multiplied every holder’s share count by 20 without changing anyone’s percentage.

Largest individual shareholders

Individual insider holdings below are shares held through direct ownership, as reported in Alphabet’s 2025 proxy statement. They exclude shares held indirectly and shares obtainable through stock options. Percentages refer to the class B shares outstanding.

Larry Page

Larry Page owns about 389.05 million class B shares, roughly 45% of that class, which makes him the single largest individual shareholder of Alphabet. He co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998, served as chief executive from the founding until 2001 and again from 2011 to 2015, and then led Alphabet as CEO from its creation in 2015 until he stepped down in December 2019. He remains a member of Alphabet’s board.

Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin owns about 362.76 million class B shares, roughly 42% of the class. He co-founded Google, served as president of Alphabet until December 2019, and sits on the board. Alphabet describes him, together with Page, as a controlling shareholder.

Combined, Page and Brin hold close to nine of every ten class B shares. With 10 votes attached to each one, those holdings give the two founders majority voting power over Alphabet. They can determine the outcome of director elections and most shareholder proposals, even though most of the economic ownership sits with outside investors in the class A and class C stock. Their control would shrink only if they sold or transferred class B shares, which would convert them to one-vote class A stock.

L. John Doerr

L. John Doerr owns about 22.34 million class B shares, a little under 2.6% of the class, plus more than 941,000 class A shares. Doerr is a venture capitalist and chairman of Kleiner Perkins, the firm that invested in Google in 1999, and he serves on Alphabet’s board of directors.

Other notable insiders

K. Ram Shriram, another board member and one of Google’s early investors, holds the largest class A position among individuals, at more than 1.89 million shares. Sundar Pichai has been CEO of both Google and Alphabet since December 2019 and receives much of his pay in stock. The board is chaired by John Hennessy, the former president of Stanford University, who became chair in 2018. The chair runs the board; voting control still rests with the founders’ class B stock.

Largest institutional shareholders

Institutional investors held about 40.03% of Alphabet’s class A shares outstanding and about 27.26% of its class C shares outstanding. The figures below are as of September 2025, drawn from regulatory filings.

Vanguard Group

Vanguard held about 516.44 million class A shares (roughly 8.88% of the class) and about 412.89 million class C shares (roughly 7.64%), making it the largest institutional holder in both listed classes. Vanguard runs mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), most of them index funds, so its Alphabet position reflects the company’s weight in the indexes those funds track. Alphabet is among the largest holdings in sector funds such as the Vanguard Communication Services ETF (VOX), where GOOGL and GOOG rank as the second- and third-largest positions.

BlackRock

BlackRock held about 428.44 million class A shares (roughly 7.36%) and about 358.54 million class C shares (roughly 6.63%). Its iShares ETF lineup includes the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), one of its largest funds, where both Alphabet share classes rank among the top 10 holdings. Like Vanguard’s, most of BlackRock’s stake comes from index-tracking products. How BlackRock makes money covers its fee model and fund business in more detail.

FMR

FMR, the parent of Fidelity Investments, was the third-largest institutional holder of class A shares, with about 229.97 million shares (3.95%). It also held about 110.1 million class C shares (2.04%). Unlike the two index giants, a larger part of Fidelity’s business is actively managed funds. One example is the Fidelity Growth Company Fund (FDGRX), which holds both GOOGL and GOOG among its top 10 positions.

JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase was the third-largest institutional holder of class C shares, with about 199.06 million shares (3.68%), and held about 139.79 million class A shares (2.40%). Its holdings come largely through its asset and wealth management arm, which manages money on behalf of clients.

What institutional ownership does and does not mean

A fund manager listed as a top holder owns the shares on behalf of its fund investors and clients, not for its own account. The ranking also differs by class: FMR is third in GOOGL, JPMorgan Chase is third in GOOG, so “top three” lists vary depending on which ticker they track.

Voting power differs too. Vanguard’s and BlackRock’s class A stakes carry one vote per share and their class C stakes carry none, so even the largest institutions have limited influence compared with the founders. Because Alphabet is one of the largest companies in the S&P 500, index funds keep buying it as money flows into broad-market products, which is why the same few managers top the holder list of most megacap stocks, from Apple to Nvidia.

How Alphabet’s ownership is disclosed

Ownership figures for Alphabet come from a few required filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), each with its own timing:

• Form 4. Insiders must report changes in their holdings, generally within two business days of a transaction. Founders’ share sales, often made under prearranged trading plans, show up here first.
• Proxy statement. Alphabet’s annual proxy lists the beneficial ownership of directors, executive officers and holders of more than 5% of a class, which is where the class B percentages above come from.
• Form 13F. Institutional investment managers with at least $100 million in qualifying securities must report their equity holdings quarterly, within 45 days after each quarter ends. Institutional rankings therefore lag actual positions by weeks or months.
• Schedules 13D and 13G. Any investor, individual or institution, that acquires beneficial ownership of more than 5% of a registered class must file one of these schedules. Passive investors such as index fund managers typically qualify for the shorter 13G.

Because the filings run on different schedules, a holder table combines snapshots from different dates. That explains why figures for the same holder can differ between sources.

How Alphabet makes money

Alphabet earns most of its revenue from advertising: ads on Google Search, YouTube and sites in Google’s ad network. Google Cloud, subscriptions such as YouTube Premium and Google One, the Play Store, and hardware such as Pixel phones make up most of the rest. A smaller “Other Bets” segment holds longer-term companies owned by Alphabet such as Waymo, the self-driving car unit.

Alphabet owns Google outright. Google LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary, so outside investors cannot buy Google separately; owning Alphabet stock is the only way to hold a stake in Google.

How to buy Alphabet shares

Individual investors can buy either listed class through any brokerage account:

1. Choose a class. GOOGL (class A) comes with one vote per share. GOOG (class C) has no vote. Both represent the same economic claim on the company. The two usually trade at similar prices, with small gaps that reflect the voting right and differences in trading volume.
2. Place the order through a broker-dealer or online brokerage. Many brokers allow fractional shares, so you do not need the price of a full share.
3. Or buy indirectly through mutual funds and ETFs that hold Alphabet, such as broad S&P 500 index funds, communication services sector funds or growth funds. A fund’s holdings page shows Alphabet’s weight, often split across both tickers.

Class B shares are not available to the public.

The Bottom Line

Anyone buying Alphabet stock should understand that economic ownership and control are split: outside investors own most of the equity, while Larry Page and Sergey Brin control a majority of the vote through 10-vote class B shares. Individual investors can choose GOOGL for one vote per share or GOOG for none, since both carry the same economic claim, or hold Alphabet indirectly through index, sector or growth funds.