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Google Is World's Most Valuable Brand

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 8, 2016 5:21 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 7:05 am

BrandZ has released its 2016 list of the 100 most valuable brands. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google ranked in first place at $229 billion.

The balance of the top 10 were Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) in second at $228 billion, then Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) at $122 billion, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) at $107, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) at $102 billion, Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) at $100 billion, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) at $99 billion, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) at $93 billion, McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) at $88 billion and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) at $86 billion.

Notably, cigarette brand Marlboro was in 12th place at $84 billion. Huge oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) was in 59th place at $17 billion, which shows that market cap and sales may be completely different from brand. Exxon is one of the world’s most valuable companies in sales and market value.

Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) was at the bottom of the list of 100 at $10 billion.

BrandZ’s comments:

In a year marked by disruption, the value of the 2016 BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands increased 3 percent, to $3.4 trillion.

Six of the 14 categories included in the 2016 ranking declined in value compared with only two last year. One category remained flat. Of the seven categories that increased in value, only two grew by more than 10 percent.

• Apparel rose 14 percent after a flat performance a year ago, followed by fast food, which increased 11 percent in value, on top of a 4 percent improvement last year.
• With a value increase of 59 percent, Amazon led all brands in value growth, followed by Starbucks (49 percent) and Facebook (44 percent).
• Two newcomers to the BrandZ™ Global Top 100 also grew substantially in value: JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce brand rose 37 percent, and the business-to-business technology brand Adobe increased 41 percent.
• North America continued to drive the largest proportion of brand value, about 69 percent, followed by Asia. The North America Top 10 brands increased 10 percent in value, while the Asia Top 10 declined 8 percent.