• by January 23, 2006

Interbrand's brandchannel.com reports that Google yanked back its first-place ranking from Apple in a poll of the world's most influential brands. And eBay-owned Skype, the free Web phone service, turned up on the list at No. 3.

The annual survey queried 2,528 branding professionals and students who attempted to come up with the brand that had the most impact on their lives in 2005. The poll doesn't take economic brand value into account.

When it comes to North America, the top three brands are Apple, Google, and Starbucks respectively, with Target Corp. coming in fourth and American cycling champion Lance Armstrong in fifth place. Apart from Google and Apple, another popular Web brand showed up on the list: Craiglist. Amazon.com also turned up, as well as Oprah, Coke, and Whole Foods.

Back to the global results. The folks in Sunnyvale have something to crow about and to keep them distracted from the management rumblings occurring within the Santa Monica-based Media Group. Yahoo! topped Firefox, eBay, and Sony in the global listing.

Check out www.brandchannel.com for the complete results.