Comment by gnicholas
7 months ago
> Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December 2019 (the same year as the Code Yellow fiasco), and while they remain as controlling shareholders, they clearly don’t give a shit about what “Google” means anymore.
Is he saying that the two of them together hold enough voting shares to completely control Google? Or is he using the phrase "controlling shareholders" in a different way?
According to this they own 86% of class B shares together: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/011516/top-5-g...
The shares they own give them 51% of the votes because when they negotiated a deal that gives them a lot more votes than anybody else. They own about 12% of the company.
Those numbers are for both of them combined. If one of them had a serious disagreement with the other they could join forces with other shareholders to create a new 51% majority.
IIRC, they combined have about 51% voting shares
Ah, looks like this is correct, at least as of 2022:
> Even though such classes of shares were unusual in the tech industry, Brin and Page decided to copy the structure. In the case of Google (now Alphabet), A shares carry one vote, while B shares each carry 10 votes. Brin and Page between them own 51 percent of those B shares, giving them joint control of the company, even though they own less than 12 percent of its total shares.
1: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/warren-buffett-google-serge...