Is This the Most Valuable Brand in the World?

Step aside, Apple — Google's taking your crown.

After a three-year reign atop the Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list, Apple has been knocked down a peg by Google.

According to the 2014 Brandz list, produced by research company Millward Brown, Google's brand value grew 40 percent over the last year, reaching a 2014 value of nearly $159 billion.

Apple, on the other hand, shed 20 percent of its brand value, slumping to just shy of $148 billion.

The switch may be due to Apple's recent spate of evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, products, Millward Brown executive Oscar Yuan told Forbes.

On the other hand, "Google continues to deliver on bringing to consumers and the business world things they’ve never seen before and things they’ve never imagined were possible," Yuan said. "That shows in their brand value.”

Fellow tech companies IBM and Microsoft took the third and fourth spots, respectively, and McDonalds' $85.7 billion brand value rounded out the top five.

Photo credit: bloomua / Shutterstock.com

The research comes on the heels of an improvement in the on-again, off-again relationship between the tech giants, with Apple and Google agreeing to a legal truce last week.

Other interesting results:

• At $35.7 billion, Facebook is apparently worth more than both Wal-Mart ($35.3 billion) and Disney ($34.5 billion).
• UPS, worth $47.7 billion, stands at number 16 on the list, trouncing FedEx, worth $17 billion and coming way down the list at number 58.
• Coke is worth over $80 billion and is in sixth place on the list, while rival Pepsi languished all the way down at number 88.
• The least valuable brand on the "Most Valuable" list was, perhaps fittingly, the discount food store Aldi.

(H/T: CNET)

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