Google is world’s first $100 bn brand
London: They changed the lexicon for the word – search. Now the phrase “I’ll just Google it” has helped make the internet search giant become world’s first $100 billion brand beating other household names like Microsoft, and Coca Cola to McDonald’s.
The analysts of the Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands by consultants Millward Brown found that the company’s value of $101.4 billion puts it 25 per cent more valuable than computer software king Microsoft at $77.3 billion, reported Daily Mail on Thursday.
Coca Cola ($68.5 billion) managed the third place in the list.
Technology companies make up the bulk of the top 10 with IBM (fourth at $67.5 billion), Apple (sixth at $63.9 billion) and China Mobile (seventh at $62.2 billion), along with consumables like cigarette brand Marlboro (10th at 50.1 billion) and burger chain McDonald’s (fifth at $67.3 billion).
Energy major GE (eight at $59.9 billion) and telecom giant Vodafone (ninth at $50.2 billion) complete the top 10 valuable brands in the world.
Google, formed at Stanford University by studentsLarry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, went up 16 percent in brand value in the past year to just break the $100 billion mark.
Google marketing manager Lorraine Twohill said: “We know that without consumers you have nothing and there is a great element of trust in us.”
“We think about the consumer first and expect everything else to fall into place after that. We don’t feel big. We still work in little crappy teams and we feel very small,” he added.
Among industries to see their value grow over the past year, most are ’stay at home’ brands, said the Millward Brown research.
Coffee companies like Nescafe benefitted from cutbacks on drinking expensive lattes in Starbucks and other coffee shops, for instance.
Soft drinks, fast food and beer brands also grew as more people stayed at home to eat and drink while online sites like eBay and Amazon also grew.
Car companies, insurers, clothing brands and, not surprisingly, financial institutions were the ones to suffer the most, the research found.
Millward Brown Chief Executive, Joanna Seddon said: “In the current environment, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times.
“Those who continue to invest in their brand will be better positioned for business growth as the economic situation starts to improve than those who have cut spend. The recession does not always harm individual brands as much as it does faceless corporations,” she added.
Reliance Comm’s Q4 net down 3.3 pc, beats forecast
New Delhi: Reliance Communications, India’s second-biggest mobile cell phone operator, posted a narrower-than-expected 3.3 per cent fall in quarterly profit on Thursday as the costs of expanding its GSM services weighed.
Reliance, which added a record 11.3 million subscribers during the March quarter after it expanded its GSM mobile operations to all of India, said its net profit fell to 14.54 billion rupees ($292 million) in its fiscal fourth quarter ended March, from 15.03 billion in the same period last year.
Revenue rose 15.3 per cent to 61.24 billion rupees. Analysts polled by Reuters had on average expected a net profit of 13.30 billion on revenue of 60.88 billion for the Mumbai-based firm, which had 72.7 million subscribers at the end of March accounting for more than 18 per cent of the wireless market.
Most of Reliance’s subscribers use a CDMA technology service but the company is aggressively pushing its GSM business with lower entry costs and free talk time.
It expanded its GSM service in January to cover all of India. Reliance’s larger rival Bharti Airtel on Wednesday reported a 21 per cent rise in quarterly profits.
Rupee recovers four paise, ends at 48.68/70 vs dollar
In line with the smart recovery in local equity markets from its early low, the rupee also rebounded from its initial weakness and ended up by nearly four paise to 48.68/70 against the greenback.
In active trade at the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the local currency resumed sharply down at 48.83/84 a dollar from the previous close of 48.72/73, and touched a low of 48.88 per dollar.
GM cuts 10,000 jobs, Nike another 1,400
General Motors Corp. is planning to slash another 10,000 salaried jobs this year, saying the cuts are unavoidable with a government restructuring deadline looming and industrywide sales in one of the worst downturns in history.
The Detroit-based automaker said Tuesday it will reduce its total number of white-collar workers by 14 percent to 63,000. About 3,400, or 12 per cent, of GM’s 29,500 salaried US jobs will be eliminated.
