Google founders cement their power with stock coup

"Our hearts are attached to google," they wrote in a letter to shareholders published on thursday. The new structure, he said, was intended to ensure that they were able to realize their vision. "We have decided that it is in google’s best interest to maintain its fundamentally based approach."

The plan: the previous google share will be de facto divided. All shareholders receive a non-voting share in addition to their voting share, which can be traded in the same way as its "big brother". The advantage now lies in the fact that in the future, for example, bonus payments to employees or the payment of acquisitions can be made by means of these non-voting shares. The power in the company does not shift.

A side effect is that the so-called split makes the stock look more attractive and could attract more buyers. At the moment, a single share costs a whopping 650 dollars.

The plan for the share split has already been approved by the board of directors. Now he still has to find the right people for the 21. June scheduled general meeting pass. "Given the fact that larry, sergej and eric control the majority of the voting rights and support this, we expect it to go through," said chief legal counsel david drummond. Eric refers to eric schmidt, the company’s long-serving CEO and current chairman of the board of directors. He had received rough share packages as part of his compensation.

Google is a money-printing machine: in the first quarter, the u.S. Internet company posted a net profit of 2.9 billion dollars (2.2 billion euros) – 61 percent more than in the same period last year. This achievement was made despite the fact that the company invested heavily in new products and employees. At the end of march, nearly 33,100 people worked for google, 600 more than at the turn of the year.

"Google had another rough quarter," the company’s acting chief page declared at the company’s headquarters in mountain view, california. The "rough bets" on the android mobile operating system, the chrome browser or the youtube video platform had paid off. The share price rose slightly in the aftermath of the crisis.

Revenue was up 24 percent to $10.6 billion – it’s the second time after the final quarter of 2011 that google has generated double-digit billion dollar revenue. The major part of the income came as usual from advertising in the search engine environment. Google is the market leader here.

Rivals include microsoft, with its search engine bing, and yahoo, the internet’s ally and cornerstone. The social network facebook also secured a good share of the advertising pie. Google’s ads were nevertheless clicked on 39 percent more often in the first quarter than in the same period last year, but at the same time revenue per click fell by 12 percent.