Country
United States
Sector
Internet
Offices
-
Employees
-
Brand value
$44,294m
Brand rating
AAA+
Enterprise value
-
Value / market cap
31.0%
User rating
Market cap
* For banks, enterprise value is substituted with market cap. Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P.
Performance of the brand
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation best known for its search engine, cloud computing and advertising technologies. 98% of Google’s revenue is through advertising, using its popular and free software services to find an audience. In recent years it has put a concerted effort into moving away from being ‘just’ a search engine, buying YouTube, releasing its internet browser Chrome, developing Android, a smart phone operating system and in 2011 releasing the first iteration of its Facebook alternative Google+ are just a few examples. Google plan to release a PC operating system in the not too distant future.
The big headlines stories for Google in 2011 have been the release of Google+, the buying of over a thousand patents from IBM and the acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
Android storms ahead of competitors
Since release in 2007, Android, Google’s smart phone operating system, has rapidly grown capturing 43.3% of the smart phone market by the second quarter of 2011. This makes it the most popular OS, comfortably ahead of rivals Apple iOS, Symbian and RIM.
The key component to Androids success is that Google do not charge for its use, making money instead from the adverts viewed by Android users. This allows Android phones to be cheaper than, for example, Apple’s iPhone, which coupled with the added freedom of third party developers to modify the OS as they wish has created the perfect market conditions for its rapid growth. Androids may not be as fashionable as the latest iPhone, but it is clear that more consumers are choosing Android than any other smart phone OS.
However despite how Android’s success in penetrating the consumer market, it faces legal challenges for patent and copyright infringement.
Google under threat from rival’s court cases
Android are currently locked in a court case with Oracle for ‘knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringing Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property.’ Further to this, Microsoft is currently suing any manufacturers selling mobile & tablet devices with Android installed. Microsoft claim Android infringes on their intellectual property and in 2010 successfully convinced HTC to pay $5 for every device sold as compensation for this IP breach. This sends discouraging signals to Google’s major partners and it would not be surprising for them to start pushing their own smart phone OS’s or moving over to the Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.
IBM patent purchases
It looks as if Google may have spent too long working in areas where it had no patent protection and is now suffering from the copyright consequences. This worry is reflected by Google’s recent spate of patent purchases, in the form of directly buying over a thousand patents from IBM to acquiring Motorola Mobility outright to gain access to their giant raft of patents.
Google enhance patent portfolio with Motorola acquisition
The latest acquisition by Google shows a hint of panic from the internet giants. Microsoft, rumoured to be interested in buying patents from Motorola to use as ammunition in their ongoing legal disputes with Android, seems to have forced Google into buying MMI to protect itself in court.
It seems unlikely that Google will go directly into smart phone manufacturing after stating they will run Motorola as a separate company. Particularly after Google cofounder Larry Page explained the acquisition was purely to strengthen Google’s growing patent portfolio.
Chrome continues to grow
Meanwhile in more established Google territory their internet browser Chrome is going from success to success. Released in 2008, Chrome has grown rapidly capturing a large proportion of the market and is now the 3rd most used browser. If it continues to gain market share at the current rate it won’t be long before it takes 2nd place from Mozilla’s Firefox, however Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains by far the market leader.
Google to open up new front to wage war on rivals with Chromium OS
As the personal computing market prepares to move away from traditional operating systems and more towards everything being accessed through a web browser Google are in set to compete with their Chromium OS. Built on the success of internet browser OS Chrome, Chromium will be looking to take on Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X.
YouTube is Google’s star player
Founded in 2005, Youtube was bought by Google in 2006. After years of unprofitability it is now starting to emerge as a chief revenue stream for Google who use their AdSense advertising software to target consumers as they visit the site an astounding 3 billion times per day. In fact, such is the popularity of the video sharing website that 2 days worth of video is uploaded every minute. Amazingly the site is still growing.
Google+ takes on Facebook
2010 saw Facebook make in excess of $2bn in revenue with what is essentially a free service. This is exactly how Google makes its money with its software. So it is of little surprise that Google’s latest software launch Google+ is looking to take on Facebook. With Facebook’s reputation suffering over privacy problems and MySpace a distant memory Google have seen the chance to tap into social networking.
Do no evil
A key part of Google’s brand position is its motto, ‘do no evil’, a very popular stance with consumers.
As had made headlines in the news, Google took on China in 2010 when they refused to continue to adhere to the internet censorship policies of China. This was a huge marketing success for Google gaining universal support for their actions.
Our 2011 figures show that Google currently has a brand value of $44,294m, which represents a significant increase from their 2010 value of $36,191m. However, the increase is only marginal compared with their brand value in 2008 ($43,085m). Google still maintain's it's AAA+ brand rating, and is the world's most valuable brand according to our league table.
Last changed September 2, 2011
League tables
Google appears in the following brand league tables:
Rank 1 in the
Global 500 2011.
Rank 2 in the
Global 500 2010.
Rank 5 in the
Global 500 2009.
Rank 3 in the
Global 500 2008.
Rank 15 in the
Global 250 2007.
2011 brand performance*
Brand value
$44,294m
Brand rating
AAA+
Enterprise value
-
Value / ent. value
-
* Figures taken on 31st December 2010.
2010 brand performance*
Brand value
$36,191m
Brand rating
AAA+
Enterprise value
-
Value / ent. value
-
* Figures taken on 31st December 2009.
2009 brand performance*
Brand value
$29,261m
Brand rating
AAA
Enterprise value
-
Value / ent. value
-
* Figures taken on 31st December 2008.
2008 brand performance*
Brand value
$43,085m
Brand rating
AAA
Enterprise value
-
Value / ent. value
-
* Figures taken on 31st December 2007.
Brandirectory user rating*
* Average values from a total of 14 votes.
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Key people
Eric Schmidt
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Since joining Google in 2001, Eric Schmidt has helped grow the company from a Silicon Valley startup to a global enterprise. Under his leadership, Google has dramatically scaled its infrastructure and broadened its offerings while maintaining a culture of strong innovation. His background uniquely prepares him to lead Google's efforts toward technological solutions that focus on users. With founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and the rest of the executive team, Eric oversees the company's technical and business strategy.
Prior to joining Google, Eric was the Chairman and CEO of Novell and Chief Technology Officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology. Earlier in his career, Eric was a member of the research staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University as well as a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Eric is a member of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007. Eric also chairs the board of the New America Foundation.
Larry Page
Co-Founder & President, Products
Larry Page was Google's founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products in April 2001. He continues to share responsibility for Google's day-to-day operations with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin.
The son of Michigan State University computer science professor Dr. Carl Victor Page, Larry's love of computers began at age six. While following in his father's footsteps in academics, he became an honors graduate from the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering. During his time in Ann Arbor, Larry built an inkjet printer out of Lego™ bricks.
While in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry met Sergey Brin, and together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998. Larry went on leave from Stanford after earning his master's degree.
In 2002, Larry was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and together with co-founder Sergey Brin, Larry was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004. He is a trustee on the board of the X PRIZE, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.
Sergey Brin
Co-Founder & President, Technology
Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, received a bachelor of science degree with honors in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave from the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, where he received his master's degree. Sergey is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship as well as an honorary MBA from Instituto de Empresa. It was at Stanford where he met Larry Page and worked on the project that became Google. Together they founded Google Inc. in 1998, and Sergey continues to share responsibility for day-to-day operations with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.
Sergey's research interests include search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and scientific data. He has published more than a dozen academic papers, including Extracting Patterns and Relations from the World Wide Web; Dynamic Data Mining: A New Architecture for Data with High Dimensionality, which he published with Larry Page; Scalable Techniques for Mining Casual Structures; Dynamic Itemset Counting and Implication Rules for Market Basket Data; and Beyond Market Baskets: Generalizing Association Rules to Correlations.
Sergey has been a featured speaker at several international academic, business and technology forums, including the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. He has shared his views on the technology industry and the future of search on the Charlie Rose Show, CNBC, and CNNfn. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight.
