Around the Net

Google: World's Most Powerful Brand

  • Reuters, Tuesday, April 24, 2007 10:45 AM
Google is the world's most powerful brand, according to the Millward Brown Optimor/Financial Times annual Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report, taking top spot from rival Microsoft. Seventh-place last year, Google rose to the summit this year with a brand value worth $66.4 billion. The search king was followed by GE ($61.9 billion), Microsoft ($54.9 billion), Coca-Cola ($44.1 billion) and China Mobile ($41.2 billion). The MBO report assigns a financial value to a brand's "intangible earnings," attributable to their global awareness. That metric is derived using public data supplied by Bloomberg's Datamonitor.

Google's rise to the top of the brand charts is symbolic of the systematic beating in two key areas: search and acquisitions. Following a slight falloff in media interest about six months ago, a slew of new offerings and big-time acquisitions catapulted the search giant back to the realm of media ubiquity. And while a couple of these new assets (notably YouTube) have drawn criticism, there's always the old adage that any press is good press.

Moreover, Google's invaluable flagship product (which many consumers use several times a day) is also its main branding mechanism. Google.com is nothing more than a huge brand image with a little search box below it. It's no wonder that as the search company's market share rises (up 5.6% in the year to March 31, according to comScore) to nearly 50%, so has its brand value.

Read the whole story at Reuters »

Next story loading loading..