When Google reorganized and became Alphabet, it was a sign of change for the tech giant. Indeed, sweeping changes have hit over the past few months that Google has been Alphabet; moonshots are being looked at more realistically, the core Google business is reorganizing into a softer, more personable organization and departments are shifting houses left and right. Some things, of course, will likely never change. Google’s primary product is search, and its other products fuel that. Moonshots will come and go despite commercial viability or lack thereof. Alphabet was, is, and will likely always be a dog-friendly company and, unfortunately, discourage cat presence in the workplace. Another thing that seems to never change is the organization of control behind shares, especially those held by the company’s bigwigs.
Every year, a group of shareholders approach Google with concerns over the structure and the fact that a majority of control is assigned to internal elements, making it extremely difficult for shareholders to get things pushed through. Naturally, their pleas to recheck the structure and make changes are rebuffed each year by the very same people they’re petitioning to take the power from. The most power, of course, is held by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders and the biggest names in Alphabet. When shareholder meetings roll around, shareholders have to unite in strong numbers to have any chance of opposing the two of them, let alone other Googlers who hold stock in high places.
Along with pushing for higher-class shares to be a bit less overpowered in decision making, shareholders on the outside have petitioned Google in the past and took to the latest meeting to ask the same of Alphabet on a number of fronts such as disclosing employee pay rates and scales in a manner that’s more conducive to gender comparisons, and letting the public in on how Alphabet is spending money in politics. Sergey Brin and Larry Page voted remotely, rather than attending this year’s meeting, a sign of just some of the change that has gone on under the Alphabet banner. All of the motions proposed by shareholders at large, of course, wound up being ousted.