Alphabet Stock (GOOGL vs GOOG): Share Classes, Cloud and Capex in Numbers

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-07

Google stock is the stock of Alphabet Inc., the holding company Google reorganized into in 2015. It trades on the Nasdaq under two tickers, GOOGL and GOOG, which confuses more buyers than any other part of the company, and a third class of shares that never trades at all decides how Alphabet is run.

Quote pages show a P/E near 15 and a market value near $3.5 trillion. They do not show what the share classes mean in votes, how fast Cloud is replacing Search as the growth line, or that the data-center build-out now uses nearly all of the cash the business makes. We pulled those from Alphabet’s filings and the price record.

GOOGL at a glance: Alphabet’s $3.50 trillion in numbers

Prices are the November 6, 2026 closes. Earnings, revenue and equity come from the 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, filed October 29, and the 10-K for 2025. Alphabet’s year ends December 31.

In 2026 to November 6 GOOGL fell 9.0%, against a 7.8% rise in the S&P 500. It set a record close of $402.62 on May 13, 2026 and was 29.3% below that at $284.78. Its lowest close of the past year was $273.50 on March 30, 2026.

How it works: three classes of one company

Class A (GOOGL) has one vote a share. Class C (GOOG) has no vote; it was created in April 2014, when Google gave holders one class C share for each class A and class B share. Class B has ten votes a share, is held mostly by the founders and insiders and does not trade; the proxy says a holder can convert it into class A share for share at any time. All three get the same dividend and the same claim on profits. The 10-Q reports diluted earnings of $2.12 a share for classes A and B in the September 2026 quarter, against $2.11 for class C.

By our arithmetic, class B’s 827 million shares cast 8.27 billion votes against 5.89 billion for class A, so 6.7% of the shares hold 58.4% of the votes. The 2026 proxy gives Larry Page 27.4% and Sergey Brin 25.3% of total voting power at April 6, 2026, 52.7% between them, even though neither runs the company day to day.

Which ticker to look at matters less than people expect. Both classes carry the same economics, and the price record below shows the market treats them as close to the same thing. Our common stock page covers how voting rights attach to shares.

The original data: GOOGL against GOOG over 2,902 sessions

GOOGL versus GOOG, every session since April 2015. We divided each GOOGL close by the GOOG close from April 27, 2015, the first session after the April 2015 adjustment payment to class C holders, which Yahoo books as the last adjustment to the class C price history.

• Across 2,902 sessions the median gap was −0.05%, GOOGL closed above GOOG on 47.9% of them, and the median size of the gap, ignoring direction, was 0.73%.
• The widest premium was +5.31% on September 1, 2015; the deepest discount −4.35% on June 18, 2021.
• By calendar year the median moved from +3.93% in 2015 to −0.89% in 2024, and is +0.61% so far in 2026.
• On November 6, 2026 GOOGL closed 0.30% above GOOG, $0.85 a share.

Search, YouTube and the rise of Google Cloud

Where the revenue comes from. Alphabet reports Google Services (Search, YouTube, Network, subscriptions and devices), Google Cloud and Other Bets. We took each line from the 10-K and 10-Q XBRL filings, using the latest restated figures, and divided by total revenue.

Cloud revenue rose from $4.06 billion in 2017 to $58.71 billion in 2025, 14.47 times. In the September 2026 quarter it was $30.71 billion, up 102.6%, while Search and other grew 12.0% to $63.35 billion and YouTube ads grew 9.2% to $11.21 billion. Total revenue grew 24.7%.

Alphabet’s capex build-out and the end of buybacks

Capital spending against the cash it is paid from. We took purchases of property and equipment from the cash flow statement and divided by operating cash flow for each year since 2013.

• 2013: $7.36 billion, 39.4% of operating cash flow. 2021: $24.64 billion, 26.9%, the low point.
• 2024 and 2025: $52.54 billion (41.9%) and $91.45 billion (55.5%, and 22.7% of revenue).
• 12 months to September 2026: $159.80 billion, 89.0% of operating cash flow and 33.9% of revenue, leaving $19.75 billion of free cash flow.
• The September 2026 quarter: $51.36 billion of capex against $42.29 billion of operating cash flow, so free cash flow was −$9.07 billion. Nine-month capex was 2.07 times the same stretch of 2025.

How the gap was paid for. From 2015 to 2025 Alphabet spent $347.9 billion buying back its own shares, $45.71 billion of it in 2025. In the first nine months of 2026 it bought back none. Instead it sold new stock: a June 2026 public offering of class A shares at $355.20 and class C at $351.80, a $10 billion private placement with Berkshire Hathaway at $351.81 and $348.20 that closed the same day, a $40 billion at-the-market program ($27.6 billion was left on September 30), and two series of 6.25% mandatory convertible preferred stock that convert into common shares around May 15, 2029. Alphabet said about $30 billion of the at-the-market money would cover 2026 tax bills on employee stock awards. Net proceeds from common stock were $42.87 billion and from the preferred $19.06 billion. Long-term debt rose from $46.55 billion at the end of 2025 to $125.10 billion on September 30, 2026. Shares outstanding went from 12,088 million at the end of 2025 to 12,294 million on October 21, 2026, up 1.7%.

Download the data: revenue mix and capex, GOOGL vs GOOG and earnings-day moves. You may reuse them with credit and a link; see the site license.

A worked example: why Alphabet’s P/E reads low

All inputs are in the 10-Q filed October 29, 2026 and the 2025 10-K, except the share prices.

1. Trailing earnings. Diluted EPS was $10.81 for 2025, $16.33 for the first nine months of 2026 and $7.99 for the first nine months of 2025. Last twelve months = $10.81 + $16.33 − $7.99 = $19.15.
2. P/E. $284.78 ÷ $19.15 = 14.9. The P/E ratio page shows the same division on other stocks.
3. Market value. $284.78 × 6,715 million class A and B shares + $283.93 × 5,579 million class C shares = $3.50 trillion. Our market cap page explains the measure.
4. What is inside the earnings. Trailing pretax income was $287.64 billion. Of that, $130.66 billion was other income, and gains on equity securities alone were $129.58 billion, 45.1% of the total. The 10-Q lists $75.2 billion of SpaceX shares among the holdings it marks to market.
5. Strip the investments out. Trailing operating income was $156.98 billion, and $3.50 trillion ÷ $156.98 billion = 22.3. That multiple is before tax, so it is not a P/E; it shows how much of the low P/E comes from marking investments up, gains that can reverse. In the September 2026 quarter they did: an $8.66 billion loss on equity securities cut diluted EPS by $0.55, by Alphabet’s own count.
6. Yield. $0.22 × 4 = $0.88 a year, and $0.88 ÷ $284.78 = 0.31%. Our dividend yield page covers that arithmetic.

GOOGL on results days: 89 reports since 2004

Google, and from October 2015 Alphabet, files results with an 8-K after the 4 p.m. Eastern close. We matched each quarterly results filing since October 2004, 89 of them, to the next session’s close-to-close GOOGL move, and left out two Item 2.02 filings that were not results. On October 18, 2012 the release came out early, at 12:30 p.m., so that day counts.

• The median move was 4.96%, against 0.90% across the other 5,457 sessions from October 22, 2004.
• 44 of the 89 (49.4%) moved 5% or more, against 1.6% of ordinary days; 9 moved 10% or more.
• Direction: 50 were up, 56.2%, against a 52.4% up-rate on other days, a gap well within chance (two-sided binomial p = 0.52).
• The largest were +19.99% on April 18, 2008 and −12.64% on October 29, 2026, the day after a quarter in which revenue grew 24.7% and Cloud doubled.
• Since 2021, 24 releases had a median move of 5.41%, and 13 were up. The last three, in April, July and October 2026, moved +9.96%, −7.13% and −12.64%.

When it fails: halvings, the capex bill and the search cases

A giant can still halve. GOOGL fell 65.3% from November 6, 2007 to November 24, 2008 and did not close above that high until September 24, 2012, 4.9 years later. It fell 44.3% from November 18, 2021 to November 3, 2022, and 30.7% from the May 13, 2026 record to November 2, 2026, a fall not yet regained. Our drawdown page explains the measure.

It does not always beat the index. GOOGL rose 65.3% in 2025 against 16.4% for the S&P 500, but fell 39.1% in 2022 against 19.4%, and trails the index in 2026 so far.

Capex risk sits with shareholders now. While buybacks shrank the share count, owners gained from the build-out without putting money in. With free cash flow negative in two straight quarters and new shares being sold, the return on more than $150 billion a year of spending decides whether owners are diluted for something that pays back. The filings do not answer that.

The courts are not done. The 10-Q says a final judgment in the US search case was entered in December 2025, requiring Google to share certain search data with competitors; both sides have appealed. In the ad technology case the court ordered behavioral remedies in September 2026 and refused a breakup; Alphabet plans to appeal the 2025 liability ruling once final judgment is entered.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between GOOGL and GOOG?

GOOGL is class A stock with one vote a share; GOOG is class C stock with no vote. Both get the same dividend and earnings. Since April 2015 their closes have typically been 0.73% apart, with GOOGL on top slightly less than half the time.

What is Alphabet’s market cap?

$3.50 trillion at the November 6, 2026 closes, using the 12,294 million shares on its latest 10-Q cover, dated October 21.

Does Alphabet pay a dividend?

Yes. The first dividend, $0.20 a share, went ex on June 10, 2024. It declared $0.22 a share in October 2026, payable December 14 to holders of record on December 7; at that rate the yield is 0.31%.

What would $1,000 in Google be worth?

That is worked out on our invested $1,000 in Google page, with 1, 5 and 10-year results against an S&P 500 fund.

Is Alphabet one of the Magnificent Seven?

Yes. Our Magnificent Seven page measures all seven against the S&P 500 from 2015.

Related

The trailing earnings here are explained on earnings per share, and the end of the buyback era on stock buybacks. The 2022 20-for-1 split behind today’s share prices is on stock split. If you own Alphabet through a technology fund, sector funds covers what that concentration means.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.