Google’s founders to give up control

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page disclosed on Friday that they plan to give up their majority control of the internet group over the next five years.

Their planned stock sales, revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, will mark a highly symbolic end to their formal control over the company they founded in their Stanford University dorm room 11 years ago.

However, for all practical purposes they will still be in a position to call the shots at Google on important matters, since they will still speak for 48 per cent of the voting rights at the company between them. Read more at www.ft.com