Since 19 Aug 2004 – where Google became a public company on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol GOOG – its founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin have published a letter to shareholders ahead of the stockholders annual meeting.
Known as Founders’ letter, these documents provide a lens on how the founders (and later Sundar Pichai) thought about the previous year.
All founders’ letters could be found on the official Alphabet website, however we have compiled them here for easier reference.
| Year – Founders’ Letter URL | Author & Key Events |
|---|---|
| 2004 – Founders’ Letter * Google went IPO | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2005 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2006 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2007 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2008 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2009 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2010 – Founders’ Letter | Sergey Brin |
| 2011 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2012 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page & Sergey Brin |
| 2013 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page |
| 2014 – Founders’ Letter | Sergey Brin |
| 2015 – Founders’ Letter * Google was reorganized as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., with Sundar Pichai as the CEO of Google. | Larry Page & Sundar Pichai |
| 2016 – Founders’ Letter | Larry Page |
| 2017 – Founders’ Letter | Sergey Brin |
| 2018 – Founders’ Letter | Sundar Pichai |
| 2019 – Founders’ Letter * Sundar Pichai became the CEO of Alphabet. | Sundar Pichai |
It seems Alphabet / Google no longer release founders’ letter since 2020. Instead, Sundar Pichai (Alphabet Inc’s CEO) releases statement in the Google blog under the label of “A message from our CEO”.
Visit the Google Blog for a full list of “A message from our CEO” posts.