Microsoft and Google founders sold billions in stock this year

Bill Gates sold $1.5 billion of stock in Microsoft this year

Bill Gates sold a whooping $1.5 billion of stock in Microsoft this year making him the top corporate insider who sold the most stocks in his company, according to a new research.

The Microsoft founder was closely followed by other tech executives such as Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page who each sold more than $800 million of company's stocks in 2015, according to Sqoop.com.

Brin took up two positions in the top ten by selling shares not only in Google but also in Alphabet which the company acquired in October this year.

New to the list from the first half of the year, WhatsApp CEO and co-founder Jan Koum sold $561 million worth of stock to land in fourth place.

While former Twitter CEO Evan William sold $359 million of shares in the company he helped to build.

Sqoop's end of the year list include data until December 5 and does not specify whether the stock sales were preplanned.

The news alerting service collects data throughout the year by tracking the amount of money company’s insiders have made from stock sales as disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The list is compiled by totalling the top 200 insider sales for the year, and then separating out institutional investors to leave out company insiders only.

10. Alphabet: Brin Sergey - $247,339,218

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, introduces the Google Glass last year (Getty Images)

9. Family Dollar Stores: Howard Levine - $278,809,852

A Family Dollar store is seen in Chicago, June 25 (REUTERS/Jim Young)

8. Best Buy: Richard Schulze - $292,219,863


 Best Buy Co Inc founder Richard Schulze talks with Microsoft President Steve Ballmer 
 (REUTERS/Jeff Christensen/)

7.Twitter: Evan Williams - $359,972,721

Evan Williams, CEO and co-founder of Twitter, at their headquarters. He is now working on a new website, Medium (Getty Images)

6. Carnival: Mickey Arison - $433,700,000

(REUTERS/Daniel Joubert)

5. Amazon: Jeff Bezos - $533,893,354

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Getty)

4. Facebook (WhatsApp): Jan Koum - $560,780,977

Jan Koum chose to sign the Facebook deal near the Social Services office where he used to collect food stamps (EPA)

3.Google: Sergey Brin - $857,259,351

(Getty)

2.Google: Lawrence Page - $867,986,934

Google's top trending topics provide an insight into what was on the mind of the nation in 2015 (Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)

1. Microsoft: Bill Gate - $1,513,748,353

It shouldn't be too surprising that one of the wealthiest people in the world also has an extravagant home (Getty Images)