Of course, it should be noted that the Brandchannel survey was more about image, likeability and other subjective brand assets, as opposed to the BrandZ ranking

This is the 3rd annual BrandZ ranking and the second year in a row that Google has come in at #1. The full report is here (.PDF).

The top ten ranking is as above, with Google #1 at a Brand Value of $86 billion and GE #2. Apple is down at #7 with a paltry $55 billion Photobucket, but according to the report, it's jumped the highest percentage amount at 123%.

How do they determine Brand Value? The report says:

Brand Value is the financial value of a brand, defined as the sum of all earnings that a brand is expected to generate.

For the purpose of the BrandZ ranking, Millward Brown Optimor values brands in three steps:

1. Establish a company’s intangible earnings and allocate them to individual brands and countries of operation, based on publicly available financial data from Bloomberg, Datamonitor (www.datamonitor.com) and Millward Brown Optimor’s own research.

2. Determine the portion of intangible earnings attributable to brand alone, as opposed to other factors such as price. This metric, known as Brand Contribution, reflects the share of earnings from a product or service’s most loyal consumers or users. For this second step, we use research-based loyalty data from the BrandZ database.

3. Project the brand value forward based on market valuations, the brand’s risk profile, and its growth potential. Data for this step is sourced from the BrandZ database, Bloomberg and Millward Brown Optimor’s own research. Using these growth inputs, we create the final metric available from the BrandZ ranking, Brand Momentum, the index of the brand’s short-term growth potential.

The report also takes care to note the influence of emerging markets and the global economy, as well as BRIC brands (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

For those interested, Yahoo! is at #62 at $11.5 billion, so if we were add their value (yes, oversimplifying, but bear with me) and Microsoft's we would find Microhoo at around $82.4 billion - still trailing Google, but very close.

Source: By Tech Ex