These are the most expensive brands of the year for 2009. No big surprises.. I guess that companies from internet and technology industry will climb up on the ranking and get better and better positions. The first five companies are at the top of the list for many years! Who doesn’t drink Coca-Cola? McDonald’s and Google go higher and higher every year while Toyota and Intel become less popular with a weaker brand name. United States is the leading country in the entire list. What a surprise!

These are the first 10 best brands of 2009:

2009 Rank	2008 Rank	Brand	Country of Origin	Sector	2009 Brand Value ($m)	Change in Brand Value
1	1		United States	Beverages	68,734	3%
2	2		United States	Computer Services	60,211	2%
3	3		United States	Computer Software	56,647	-4%
4	4		United States	Diversified	47,777	-10%
5	5		Finland	Consumer Electronics	34,864	-3%
6	8		United States	Restaurants	32,275	4%
7	10		United States	Internet Services	31,980	25%
8	6		Japan	Automotive	31,330	-8%
9	7		United States	Computer Hardware	30,636	-2%
10	9		United States	Media	28,447	-3%

Click here to view the entire list.

(via InterBrand)

Apple and Microsoft.. How similar and how different they are? The new Microsoft Store (as we say Apple Store) has a logo that is very similar to all Apple products’ logos with two gray shades (picture).

Just be patient! The new Windows 7 are coming with ‘new and innovative’ ideas! (maybe they will include Spotlight, Time machine, Dock and many other NEW features!)

Google continued to increase its U.S. search share dominance in October, widening its lead over Yahoo and Microsoft. In October, Google’s share of Web searches by people in the U.S. rose to 71.7 percent, up from 71.2 percent in September and 64.5 percent in October of 2007, according to market research company Hitwise.

At the same time, Yahoo’s share slipped to 17.7 percent, from 18.1 percent a month earlier and 21.7 percent a year ago. Microsoft’s share rose slightly in October to 5.4 percent from 5.36 percent in September, but the down from 7.4 percent in October of last year. Internet searches at Ask.com fell to 3.5 percent from 3.6 percent a month ago, and from 4.8 percent last year.

Hitwise bases its data on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users over four week rolling periods. The Microsoft figures include Live.com and MSN Search but does not include Club.Live.com.

The remaining 43 search engines Hitwise tracks accounted for 1.6 percent of U.S. searches in October.

Source: Macworld

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New York Times compared Google and Microsoft:

Google?s age: 10
Microsoft?s age: 33

Google?s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $19.6 billion
Microsoft?s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $60.4 billion

Microsoft?s revenue at age 10: $140 million
($279 million in today?s dollars)

Google?s revenue per hour in the last 4 quarters: $2.2 million
Microsoft?s revenue per hour in the last 4 quarters: $6.9 million

Google net income in the last 4 quarters: $4.85 billion
Microsoft?s net income in the last 4 quarters: $17.6 billion

Google employees, as of June 30th: 19,604
Microsoft employees, as of May 31st: 89,809

Google?s revenue per employee: $1 million
Microsoft revenue per employee: $672,000

Market value of Google: $142 billion
Market value of Microsoft: $241 billion

Number of tech companies with a market value larger than Google?s: 3 (Microsoft, I.B.M. and Apple, in that order)

Worldwide searches on Google in July: 48.7 billion
Worldwide searches on Microsoft in July: 2.3 billion

Worldwide searches per hour on Google in July: 65 million
Worldwide searches per hour on Microsoft in July: 3.1 million

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Marketers are excited when they speak about Brand Names and their economic value. According to the latest research, these are the most expensive brand names!

First is Google that costs $86.06 billions, second is General Electric that costs $71.38 billions, then Microsoft with $70.89, billions, Coca-Cola with $58.21 billions,  IBM with $55.34 billions, and Apple with $55.21 billions!