You were given a certain number of GOOG shares that vest over a 4 year period. That is your vesting schedule. You typically do not "buy" your RSUs as an employe

You were given a certain number of GOOG shares that vest over a 4 year period. That is your vesting schedule. You typically do not "buy" your RSUs as an employee. They are granted to you and thus are subject to ordinary income tax. A company's founding team will "buy" the RSUs as part of the initial capitalization of the company. Young companies may have RSU sales to employees rather than a grant (one could argue that this is a small financial optimization). If you left after 2 years, you would only receive half this amount even though you were "given" these shares when you joined. On the books, you are listed as holding all those shares. For example, since you are a RSU holder, you have the right to make an 83b election, though at such a mature company most of the tax benefits would be suspect. As a RSU holder, you have full rights of being a shareholder, even for the shares that have not vested yet (this is why startup founders will have voting power from Day 1 even though 0% of their stock has vested yet). That being said you hold GOOG shares and not GOOGL shares (the latter has voting rights) so for all intent and purposes what you describe is accurate for what you see on the surface, despite the underlayers being more subtle.