GOOG vs. GOOGL: What's the Difference Between Alphabet's Share Classes?

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GOOG and GOOGL are both publicly traded shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and the only real difference between them is voting power. GOOGL is Alphabet’s Class A stock, with one vote per share. GOOG is Class C stock, with no voting rights. Each share represents the same ownership stake in the company. For most individual investors, the choice comes down to whether a shareholder vote matters to them and which class is cheaper at the moment they buy.

Alphabet’s Three Share Classes

Alphabet has three classes of stock. Only two of them trade on an exchange.

• Class A (GOOGL): Common stock with the standard one-share, one-vote structure. Holders can vote on board elections and major corporate decisions at the shareholder meeting.
• Class B (no ticker): Held by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and a small number of other insiders and directors. Each share carries 10 votes. Class B shares are not listed and cannot be bought on the open market.
• Class C (GOOG): Ownership with no voting rights. Class C shares have been distributed to employees and to existing Class A holders.

Why Google Created Nonvoting Shares

Before April 2014, Google’s public shareholders held Class A stock, while Page and Brin controlled the company through high-vote Class B shares. That month, the company created the nonvoting Class C and issued one Class C share for every Class A share an investor already owned.

The distribution doubled each holder’s share count without adding any votes. This let the company issue new stock, for example to pay employees or fund acquisitions, without diluting the founders’ voting control. Page and Brin could keep using public markets for liquidity and capital while retaining majority voting power through their Class B holdings.

The structure also limits a familiar outside threat. Activist investors often accumulate voting shares, sometimes in coordination, to pressure management into cost cuts, share buybacks or special dividends, and the fight can turn hostile when activists campaign for board seats. With voting control concentrated in Class B, an outsider buying GOOGL cannot realistically win that kind of contest.

How the Two Prices Compare

In theory, GOOGL should trade at a premium because a vote has some value. In practice, the two prices usually sit close together. Sometimes one class trades above the other, and the gap has run in both directions. Arbitrage tends to narrow these spreads over time: when one class gets noticeably more expensive than the other, traders can sell the richer class and buy the cheaper one, and that buying and selling pushes the prices back toward each other.

Example: Measuring the Spread

As a hypothetical example, suppose GOOGL trades at $200.40 and GOOG at $200.00. The premium for the voting class is:

(GOOGL price − GOOG price) ÷ GOOG price = ($200.40 − $200.00) ÷ $200.00 = 0.2%

An investor putting $10,000 into the cheaper class at these prices would get about 50 shares either way. The 0.2% difference works out to roughly $20, and that is the price of the votes those shares would carry. Whether those votes are worth $20 to you is the whole decision.

Which Should You Buy: GOOG or GOOGL?

Choose based on these factors:

1. Do you want to vote? If casting a ballot at the annual meeting matters to you, buy GOOGL. This is the one feature GOOG lacks.
2. How much influence would your vote have? Class B holders control the outcome of shareholder votes. A retail holder of GOOGL can vote, but cannot change the result. That is why many individual investors see GOOG as the slightly more cost-effective choice when it trades lower.
3. Which is cheaper today? If the spread favors one class, that class buys the same economic exposure for less. If the spread is negligible, the choice has little financial effect.

Both classes trade on the Nasdaq and are open to anyone with a brokerage account.

Whichever ticker you pick, the investment case is about Alphabet itself: its earnings, valuation and growth outlook.

Index Funds Hold Both Classes

Both GOOG and GOOGL are constituents of the S&P 500 as separate listings, so funds that track the index own both. In 2017, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced it would stop adding companies with multiple share classes or limited shareholder rights to its flagship indexes. Companies already in those indexes, including Alphabet, kept their place. If you own an S&P 500 index fund, you already hold some of each class.

The 2022 Stock Split

Alphabet announced a 20-for-1 stock split in February 2022, and it took effect on July 15, 2022. The split applied to all three share classes. A holder of one GOOG or GOOGL share before the split had 20 shares afterward, each priced at about one-twentieth of the old price.

A split does not change the value of a holding or the relationship between the classes. GOOGL kept one vote per share, GOOG kept none, and Class B kept 10. The split lowered the price of a single share, which made whole shares easier for individual investors to buy.

The Risks

The share classes do not change the business risk. GOOG and GOOGL rise and fall on the same company news, so owning one, the other or both does not diversify a portfolio.

The real tradeoff is governance. If Alphabet’s controlling shareholders make choices outside investors dislike, holders of either class have little power to resist beyond selling.

The Bottom Line

Anyone buying Alphabet stock directly faces this choice, and the stakes are small. Class B holders decide shareholder votes, so a retail GOOGL vote cannot change the result, and many individual investors pick whichever class is cheaper at purchase. Both classes move on the same company news, so the decision that matters is whether Alphabet's earnings, valuation and growth outlook justify owning the stock.