Tech Founders Embraced Control Over Companies. This One Is Giving It Up.

For more than a decade, some of the best known technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Snap, have sold shares to the public while maintaining a corporate structure that allowed their founders to keep tight control over their companies.

For Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, it was a way to protect themselves from pesky investors interested in short-term gains, even as shareholder advocates blasted the arrangements for creating unaccountable leaders.

Now Zynga, a once high-flying maker of popular internet games such as FarmVille and Words With Friends, has taken the unusual step of scrapping its founder-friendly structure — a change that could make it easier for the company to sell itself down the line.

By NICK WINGFIELD and JACK NICAS