TL;DR — The gap between Alphabet’s voting GOOGL and non-voting GOOG shares narrowed to about 0.1% by late January 2026, near parity. Capital allocation drove it: Alphabet’s buyback, which leaned heavily on Class C, was shrinking. At parity the vote cost nothing. Later in 2026, GOOGL moved to a premium near 1%.
In theory, the spread between Alphabet’s two traded share classes is a governance tax. Class A (GOOGL) carries one vote per share, Class C (GOOG) carries none, and textbooks say control should command a premium. By the end of January 2026 that tax had all but disappeared. On January 29, GOOGL closed at $338.25 and GOOG at $338.66, a gap of about 0.1%.
The textbook voting premium never showed up in Alphabet’s tape
The first surprise in the data is direction. Based on Nasdaq closing prices, the non-voting GOOG traded above the voting GOOGL on average in every year from 2021 through 2025. Measured as GOOGL’s premium over GOOG, the annual averages were:
- 2021: minus 1.04%
- 2022: minus 0.39%
- 2023: minus 0.67%
- 2024: minus 0.89%
- 2025: minus 0.63%, with the widest point at minus 1.67% on April 7, 2025
In other words, investors were paying up for the share with no vote. Then the gap compressed fast. The monthly average went from minus 1.38% in April 2025 to minus 0.17% in September and minus 0.12% in January 2026. By the time of this article, the two lines were trading within a rounding error of each other.
Alphabet’s shrinking buyback explains the convergence
This was not a market accident. Alphabet has been one of the largest buyers of its own stock, and it bought mostly Class C. Class C accounted for 85% of repurchase dollars in 2023, 81% in 2024 and 86% in 2025, even though Class C made up slightly less than half of the combined A and C shares outstanding.
The effect shows up in the share counts. Class C shares outstanding fell from 5,691 million at the end of 2023 to 5,429 million at the end of 2025, a 4.6% reduction. Class A went from 5,899 million to 5,822 million, down only 1.3%. The non-voting float was shrinking more than three times faster.
Alphabet’s 10-K says it buys each class based on economic cost and market conditions, including relative prices and volumes. Whatever the rationale, a persistent corporate bid concentrated in one class is a plausible reason for that class to trade rich. Our guide to Alphabet’s share classes covers the voting structure behind it.
The capital allocation pivot came in the second half of 2025. Quarterly repurchases fell from $15.6 billion in Q4 2024 to $11.5 billion in Q3 2025 and $5.5 billion in Q4 2025 as cash shifted toward AI infrastructure. As the company’s Class C demand faded, so did the Class C premium. The timing fits, though price data alone cannot prove cause.
Supply runs the other way too. Employee RSUs settle in Class C shares, so payroll adds to the Class C float every quarter. With heavy buybacks, that issuance was more than absorbed. With smaller buybacks, the steady flow of new Class C stock meets less corporate demand, which is another reason to expect the old Class C premium to erode.
At parity, the vote costs nothing. That is the whole trade.
Voting rights for free made GOOGL the cleaner hold at parity
When two securities have identical economic rights and one adds a vote, paying the same price for both makes the voting share strictly better. The vote is mostly symbolic, since Class B shares carry ten votes each and keep control with the founders. Symbolic still beats nothing when it costs nothing.
The stakes are modest for a long-term holder. On a $100,000 position, a 1% spread is $1,000, meaningful but small next to a year of share price movement. For funds that hold both classes or trade the pair, the swings matter more.
That was the logic of the original call. With the gap near 0.1%, choosing GOOG over GOOGL offered no margin of safety and gave up the vote. The pivot rule was symmetric: if the gap later moved past 1.5% in GOOGL’s favor, swapping into the cheaper GOOG would capture the spread when it reverted.
Update: the gap flipped, and GOOGL now trades at a premium
Updated October 2026. The convergence did not stop at zero. With Alphabet reporting no share repurchases in the first half of 2026, GOOGL moved above GOOG in March and stayed there for most of the year. The premium was 1.14% on June 30 and peaked at 1.49% on September 18, 2026, just short of the 1.5% trigger.
Alphabet’s own June equity raise confirmed the market price of the vote. Its underwritten offering sold 29 million Class A shares at $355.1982 and 29 million Class C shares at $351.8018, a premium of about 1%. On September 30, the closing gap was 0.98%. Our Alphabet buyback tracker follows whether repurchases resume.
What to watch next: the class mix of any renewed buyback, since a return to Class C-heavy purchases would likely compress the GOOGL premium again; sales under Alphabet’s $40 billion at-the-market program, which can issue either class; and whether the gap breaks through 1.5%. The spread now reflects corporate flows more than governance, so the 10-Q is the best tool for reading it.
Sources and disclosure: Alphabet’s 2024 Form 10-K and 2025 Form 10-K (repurchases by class), Q4 2025 earnings release, Q3 2025 release and Q2 2026 Form 10-Q on SEC EDGAR; Alphabet Investor Relations; spread calculations from Nasdaq historical closing prices for GOOGL and GOOG. The author holds a long position in Alphabet (GOOGL/GOOG). This is not investment advice; see our About page for full disclosure.
