GOOGL vs GOOG: Alphabet's Three Share Classes and the Price Gap

Alphabet, Google's parent company, trades under two tickers. GOOGL is the Class A share with one vote per share; GOOG is the Class C share with no voting rights. Dividends and price performance are virtually identical, so for individual investors who will never cast a vote at a shareholder meeting, the practical difference usually narrows down to a price gap of less than 1%. Tracing why this structure exists, however, also reveals how Alphabet's governance, its buyback program, and the way both tickers move as one during earnings season all fit together.

GOOGL, GOOG, and Class B: how the three classes differ

Alphabet stock comes in three classes. According to Investing.com Academy, Class A (GOOGL) carries one vote per share, Class C (GOOG) carries none, and the unlisted Class B carries ten votes per share. Class B is held only by insiders, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The invisible Class B is the key. Third Pole Markets, tallying the April 2026 proxy statement, puts the combined voting power of Page (27.4%) and Brin (25.3%) at 52.7%. Their economic stake is only about 11.5%, but ten votes per share hand them a permanent majority. No matter how much GOOGL outside shareholders accumulate, they cannot overturn a vote — which means the single vote attached to GOOGL is worth less in practice than it sounds.

The two tickers deliver virtually the same return — what differs is whether you can raise your hand at the shareholder meeting, and a gap of a few dollars.

Why create a share with no vote? The 2014 split

Class C was born in a 2014 stock split that turned each existing share into one Class A share plus one Class C share. The purpose was explicit: let the company keep issuing new shares for employee compensation and acquisitions without diluting the founders' voting power, by making those new shares carry zero votes. Google settled the shareholder lawsuit over that split for $522 million. In July 2022, both classes went through a 20-for-1 split, producing today's price level.

Economic rights are identical across all three classes. When Alphabet initiated its first-ever quarterly dividend ($0.20 per share) in June 2024, it paid all classes equally, and buybacks are concentrated in the widely floated Class C. Shares are issued in C and retired in C — while the founders' Class B stays untouched.

How much is the gap actually worth? A 100-share calculation

GOOGL, with its voting right, tends to trade at a small premium, but the gap normally stays under 1% and arbitrage closes it quickly. That is nothing like the double-digit discounts seen between Korean preferred and common shares. The table below takes the earnings-day close of $342.09 as the GOOGL price and works out the implied GOOG price and the difference on a 100-share position at each premium level.

Even at a 1% gap, the difference on 100 shares is $339 — about 500,000 won at the exchange rate implied in the Hankyung article (roughly 1,477 won per dollar). Hard to ignore for a long-term holder, but not enough to bend the return curve. Note that the usually-under-1% relationship can break temporarily around index rebalancing, shifts in buyback allocation, or governance disputes — if the gap moves outside its usual range, check the reason before celebrating a bargain.

Earnings hit both tickers identically: the Q2 2026 case

According to Hankyung, Alphabet's Q2 revenue announced on July 22 came in at $119.8 billion, up 24% year over year and above the consensus of $116.9 billion. Google Cloud revenue jumped 82% to $24.8 billion, far above the $22.46 billion estimate, and cloud operating income more than tripled to $8.8 billion. The core business held up too: search revenue rose 17% to $63.3 billion and YouTube ads 13% to $11.1 billion.

Yet the stock closed down 1.46% at $342.09 on the day and fell more than 3% after hours. The company raised its full-year capital spending forecast from $180-190 billion to $195-205 billion, and Q2 free cash flow swung to negative $5.86 billion. Revenue and profit beating consensus while capex guidance sinks the stock — a textbook replay of why guidance matters more than EPS in an earnings release. And every one of those numbers hit GOOGL and GOOG identically. Whichever class you hold, the homework of reading the earnings is the same.

What to watch

• The GOOGL-GOOG gap — normally under 1%; if it widens beyond that, check index events and governance news first
• Buyback size and class allocation in the quarterly 10-Q filings
• Class B ownership changes — whether the founders' combined 52.7% voting power slips below a majority
• Capex guidance ($195-205 billion for the year) and how fast free cash flow recovers
• Whether the quarterly dividend (started at $0.20 per share) rises and stays equal across classes

References

• Hankyung — Alphabet Q2 revenue tops estimates as Google Cloud jumps 82%
• Investing.com — GOOG vs GOOGL: What is the difference?
• Third Pole Markets — Alphabet Share Classes Explained