Google shareholder wants to do away with dual-stock structure

Posted Apr 14th 2006 9:54AM by Brian White
Filed under: From the Boards, Industry

In an interesting story - but not unexpected - a Google shareholder is trying to get the company to do away with the current stock voting structure that he says (and I agree with) gives too much voting control to the founders and CEO of Google, Inc. (Schmidt, Brin and Page, respectively).

Together, these three tentpoles to the Google empire have voting rights on over 68 percent of the company through their combined Class B shares. That's a lot on control for a company with a $100 billion market cap, eh? I have to agree with this shareholder in that there is way to much voting power tied up in too few hands - but releasing that power may make Google succumb to the evil shareholder forces that sometimes leap into action - hence Google's mantra of "do no evil".

Tags: GOOG, Google stock, GoogleStock, Goole Class B shares, GooleClassBShares