According to Millward Brown’s annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand ranking, Google has topped Apple to become the world’s most valued brand.
According to the study, Google’s brand value rose 40% to $159 billion while Apple, which has held the premier spot for the past three years, dropped 20% to $148 billion.
If you study consumer thoughts and behavior, one can probably make a good guess that this transition is because Apple has been kind of on the back foot this year. Apple is known to be a highly innovative company popular for its ground-breaking products. Obviously, they’ve slowed down quite a bit after Steve Jobs.
Google, on the other hand, has continued to leverage on its impeccable search engine and hugely popular Android platform. Adding to that is the great amount of hype they’ve managed to create with Google glass, the next big thing in wearable technology and of course things like self-driving cars. Obviously, all of these activities send a strong signal to consumers about the beauty of Google.
Tech companies dominated the list with four of the top 5 being tech companies – Google, Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. The only non-tech company in the top 5 is McDonald’s. Among other tech firms in the top 25 are Chinese company Tencent (14), SAP (19), Facebook (21) and Baidu (25).
Facebook is among the companies making the largest leap in the rankings, moving up 10 spots compared to last year. Twitter, on the other hand, marked its debut on the global brand’s list, at No. 71.