Alphabet Inc. (GOOG, and GOOGL) is the parent of Google, the world’s largest search engine, which dominates Internet search activity globally. The parent also is involved in an array of businesses, including cloud computing, software and hardware, advertising services, and mobile and desktop applications.
The company, originally called Google, was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a garage in September, 1998. Now, more than two decades later, it has grown into a tech giant, with a market cap of $787.6 billion.
The two ticker symbols for Google represent two different classes of shares, A and C: Class A shares have voting privileges, while those with Class C shares do not. The company also issues Class B shares, which carry 10 votes each that are only owned by insiders and are not traded on the market.
Larry Page is the co-founder of Google and a board member of Alphabet. He served as Alphabet’s CEO until December, 2019, when he stepped down. He was replaced by Sundar Pichai, who is now CEO of both Alphabet and Google.
As of this writing, Page holds approximately 40.1 million shares of Alphabet Class C stock. Page is considered one of the wealthiest people in the United States with a net worth of $53 billion, according to Forbes.
Sergey Brin is the co-founder of Google and a board member of Alphabet. He served as president of Alphabet until December, 2019. Born in Russia, Sergey Brin and his family emigrated to the United States in 1979 when he was six.
While completing his doctorate in computer science at Stanford, he met Larry Page. As part of a research project, the pair developed an early version of Google. By 1998, the two founded Google and became billionaires when the company had its initial public offering in 2004.
Brin is currently the shareholder with the second-largest stake of Alphabet Class C shares, holding approximately 38.9 million shares. Brin has a net worth of $51.1 billion according to Forbes.
Vanguard Group is one of the largest investment advisors in the U.S., with approximately 425 low-cost funds and ETFs. This firm held about $6.2 trillion in assets under management (AUM) as of January 31, 2020. Among the largest ETFs in the Vanguard stable is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), with approximately $122.1 billion in AUM. Vanguard holds about 22.6 million Class C shares of Alphabet.
BlackRock is a global investment management company and the largest asset manager in the world. This firm held about $7.4 trillion in AUM as of December 31, 2019. BlackRock offers a wide array of mutual funds, closed-end funds, and the popular iShares line of ETFs. The company’s largest fund by AUM is its iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), which currently has AUM of $164.9 billion. BlackRock holds approximately 20.0 million Class C shares of Alphabet.
T. Rowe Price is a publicly owned investment management company offering a variety of account management services, funds, advisory products, and more. The firm holds about $1.2 trillion in AUM. This company’s largest fund is its T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund, currently with about $67.4 billion in AUM. T. Rowe Price holds about 12.2 million Class C shares of Alphabet.
Source Google Filings
