Saturday, May 2, 2009

GOOGLE can now call itself a billion-dollar brand.

A business survey found that the search engine giant has become the world's first $100 billion ($148b) brand.

Its value was almost 25 per cent more than its rival, Microsoft, according to the annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Brands report.

Google's label value rose 16 per cent in just one year.

While the overall value of the top 100 brands has risen by 2 per cent in the past year despite the turbulence in the global economy.

It is the third year in a row that Google has secured the top spot.

'Google's rank has been driven by fantastic financial performance and equity value,' said Mr Peter Walshe, the global account director at Millward Brown.

Ms Lorraine Twohill, Google's marketing manager, told The Daily Telegraph: 'We know that without consumers you have nothing and there is a great element of trust in us.

'We think about the consumer first and expect everything else to fall into place after that.

'We don't feel big. We still work in little, scrappy teams and we feel very small.'

Google, formed at Stanford University by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, went up 16 per cent in brand value in the past year to just break the US$100b mark.

Industries that saw their value grow over the past year are mostly 'stay at home' brands, said the Millward Brown research.

Coffee companies like Nescafe benefited from cutbacks on drinking expensive lattes in Starbucks and other coffee shops, for instance.

Soft drinks, fast food and beer brands also grew as more people stayed at home to eat and drink while online sites like eBay and Amazon also grew.

Car companies, insurers, clothing brands and, not surprisingly, financial institutions were the ones that suffer the most, the research found.

'In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times,' said Millward Brown Optimor chief Joanna Seddon.

The top five brands are:

1. Google: US$100b

2. Microsoft: US$76b

3. Coca-Cola: US$68b

3. IBM: US$67b

4. McDonald's: US$67b