Google Overtakes Apple As the World's Most Valuable Brand

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes in with news that global market research agency Millward Brown has proclaimed Google as the world's most valuable brand. "US search engine Google has overtaken rival technology titan Apple as the world's top brand in terms of value, global market research agency Millward Brown said Wednesday. Google's brand value shot up 40 percent in a year to $158.84 billion (115 billion euros), Millward Brown said in its 2014 100 Top BrandZ report. 'Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,' said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France. Apple, which dominated the top position for three straight years, saw its brand value fall by 20 percent to $147.88 billion."

Brand Value?

[ketomax]

I can buy an iPhone, iPad, Windows OS, Microsoft Office (or it's subscription). What exactly does Google sell apart from Ads (and our data)? Google Fiber is not available worldwide. Gmail is awesome even when free. Google glass does not seem like it will be usable because of the backlash. How does Google's brand value serve them when compared to the likes of Apple & Microsoft?

Re:And...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blame the market for supplying what society demands.

Re:Brand Value?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still don't get it, do you? At Google, you're not the customer... You are the product. Or more to the point, your browsing habits and associated data is the product. That's why there is Google+. Imagine the windfall Google would gain if they could have the kind of active user base of Facebook joined with their business model.

Re:And...

[CastrTroy]

The question is, how much would you pay to access Google without ads? If they started offering a solution without ads for $2 a month would it be worth it to you? Sure, they probably don't make $2 worth of ad clicks off most people, but arranging the billing system for millions for users would make the system much more costly to run. So, now we got Google without ads. That's $2 a month. Then add Slashdot. Maybe they only charge $0.50 a month. Add on facebook, that's another $2 a month. Reddit might be $1 a month. New York Times, there's another $1. Pretty soon the number start to add up and you're easily paying $20 a month just to access websites without ads. Maybe somebody gets a whole bunch of sites together so you can pay 1 fee to access all the sites that use this service ad free. But there's sites still not using this service so you end up paying others to be ad-free.

To make any of the above work, you have to be logged in any time you are accessing the ad-free sites you are paying for, so they have a flawless way of tracking all the pages you are visiting on their site. Currently I can go to Google in Incognito mode, do some searches, and then next time I come back, I'm a completely different person, so tracking is limited. With a service you pay for, you are logged in, so they are able to accumulate a lot of information about you.

Re:Well, well, well

[lister king of smeg]

Yes because they're open sourceing of two different operating systems and a browser and sponsoring of the summer of code event counts for nothing. Actually their algorithm is the least thing that matters. Lets say someone else had wrote it and licensed it gpl, for sake of argument, google could use it alter it and make their billions and never give back as they don't distribute.