Google best brand of 2003?

[Business Brian]

A fair assessment?
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3456363.stm
 
excerpt:
 

Internet search engine Google was the top brand of 2003, a survey of 4,000 branding professionals has concluded.
 
 
The rankings, compiled by industry experts Interbrand, were made on the basis of the "impact" the brands had during the year.
 
Computer company Apple came second, after seeing its iPod music machine become a must-have Christmas present. The Mini car, a motoring icon that starred in movie blockbusters and was re-invented by BMW, came third.
 

HOWEVER, was all this before Florida?
 
This quote deserves highlighting, though:
 
seven out of 10 people will click onto Google's webpage when they are looking for information on the Internet.
 
One for the SEO industry.

[altyfc]

Yeah, probably a fair assessment.
 
But they should enjoy it while it lasts.  Whilst Google won't disappear tomorrow, it's future is probably more uncertain than some would have you believe.
 
Aaron

[Business Brian]

It depends really on whether Google is going to push on with the expert system. It does make the results very irrelevant in many places - in some places it's like turning back the net to before the advent of the 21st century.
 
But Google are apparently pulling back from the expected IPO, because "market conditions are not right". Or maybe it's because everyone knows that the single thing that made Google successful - the PR algo - is the very thing that Google have been trying to dump before flotation. And investors are not going to like that.
 
The way Google's results have been scewing around, then it's almost certain that Google will begin to lose a significant percentage share of the SE market - exaggerated by the loss of supplying Yahoo (and what if other portals - such as AOL, Netscape, etc, follow suit?). In which case Google would only have AdWords and AdSense to make a name for itself. And that's hardly going to be very inviting. Who wants to buy another Overture?

[trevHCS]

In which case Google would only have AdWords and AdSense to make a name for itself. And that's hardly going to be very inviting. Who wants to buy another Overture?

With the amount of money Adwords is making - I'll have it.  Now, erm, anyone want lend me say $2 billion?

I know theres a lot of talk of Google becoming second in the search engine stakes, but is there anyone who can beat them at what they do? The biggest runner seems to be MSN, but can Microsoft really build 10 data centres and get Windows to run across all of them - they ain't going to start using Linux... Actually make that 35 data centres as Windows also can't handle the same number of connections.

With regards branding - the big test is whether people outside the techie world have heard of the company.

- Apple have done an excellent job there although by spending a lot on advertising.
- Google, well even people who aren't on the Net seem to know about it that I talk to
- Microsoft, I get a lot of blank looks when I mention them and think of the amount they spend.

In my book - Google wins hands down...

Trev

[Owen]

I think Google will be king of the SEs for a couple of years yet. Anyone remember when Altavista was king and supplied Yahoo? And then they got a little too greedy and the rest is history...
It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft go forward on this front and whether supposed "next generation" search engines such as eurekster break into the market.

[trevHCS]

Google do have one major advantage over everyone else - free PR. As someone said on another forum recently, look at Gmail.

Google don't mention it on their site anywhere, they've probably spent absolutely nothing on advertising it and it won't be available for a few months, but the free PR surrounding it has got people like Yahoo and Hotmail (Microsoft) running for their chequebooks and still offering something inferior!

Admittidly Microsoft had a bit of this with Windows 95 when people who didn't even own a computer were buying it, but they spent millions (maybe billions) on advertising to get there....Google is truly one of a kind which should stand them in good stead.


Actually if you want to see how much of an impact MSN's search will have, just look at the current proportions of users. Anyone new to the Net might well just type in their search query into the address bar and MSN will popup with the results, but Google is still outdoing them in terms of % of users and to do that people have to know about Google and go off to find it...

I doubt MSN v2 will make that much of an impact to be honest.

Trev

[solar]

I'm big into google...I always find what I need. and while it isn't my home page..i visit it many times a day...i also use their sitemapping, adwords and adsense...i think it's everywhere..and they keep expanding their uses and abilities...

I think they will be a major player for awhile more...I don't read statistics on it, i know what I use, my family uses and my friends use...and it usually comes down to google...i'm also getting the major load of traffic on my sites via google as well. that's what counts to me...who's giving me traffic.

[McClainsResume]

I work for my city's public library in the computer lab and Google is on the first page when you logon to the internet. In addition to that, most of the people who come in type Google when they are doing a search.

[feline]

Well, for the cyberspace, google is synonymous to searching in the net and it already has built a name in this arena.  It would take a very hard time for another company to be able to beat google in regards to search engine matters.

[Grace]

They have top billing for sure.  Google is always available and useful to millions of people.  We don't know their future, though.