Today BrandZ has published the Top 100 Most Valuable Brands. And the winner is Google who has become the first $100 billion brand. With a 16% increase on last years results, Google beat its rival Microsoft to the top spot by 25%.
 

BrandZ -Top 100 Brands

The top 5 brands are:

Google
Microsoft
Coca-cola
IBM
McDonald’s

This is the third time that Google has held the top position, and I am pretty sure that Google will retain this position in 2010.

Over the past few years Google has reached pretty much every area of the internet (Search engine, Map, News, Internet explorer, phone, social media, video…). Although Microsoft is planning many future online projects, it seems unlikely that they can become as popular as Google in a year. The fact that Microsoft is desperately trying for partnership with Yahoo shows that future prospects of Microsoft may not be too good…

Anyway, we are now living in a Google world after a few years of Microsoft world.

Welcome to the Googlelisation of the world.

Every 22nd of April is Earth day.

The aim of Earth day is to promote awareness for the Earth’s environment. It was created by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970.

Google and Yahoo have both decided to promote this event, but not at the same cost once again.

Both Yahoo and Google promote Earth Day on their home page.

Earth Day - Google

Google includes a new ‘Google’ logo and a links to a Google result page for the keyword ‘Earth Day’. Not too much work for Google !

Yahoo on the other hand has created a little flash animation on its logo and links to its own website Yahoo! Green where they have created new pages about this event. This site has some nice flash animations and information. Yahoo wants to finance this website by advertising on it.

Yahoo Earth Day Logo

Yahoo Green - Earth Day

Once again, Yahoo have made a lot more effort than Google, but the weird thing is people are talking a lot more about the Earth Day Google logo initiative than the micro site of Yahoo… …..must be difficult to be Yahoo!

New battle between the two online giants: the online coverage of the Indian election 2009.

Everything is ready to attract new users. And we can see that Google and Yahoo have definitely chosen the right country to fight over, with over 45 million  internet users in India. And the Indian internet market is growing pretty quickly. So what have the done for the Indian election 2009? Both of them have now made a micro site about this election:

Yahoo Site - Indian Election

http://in.elections.yahoo.com/ from Yahoo! and

Google Site - Indian Election

http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/ from Google.

My first impression is that Yahoo! has made a far better job of it than Google on this one. The design and structure of the information is very well done particularly in comparison with  Google’s attempt. Google has just created an iGoogle page for this election; not that user friendly!

We can also see that Yahoo!, unlike Google, is trying to make some money via advertising to finance this initiative. I imagine that this is because Yahoo has spent a lot more money on this project than Google and need to recoup their financial investment.

But the investment (time and money) is very little compared to the amount put in to the American election few months ago (obviously from an American company this is no big surprise).

It is hard to know who will be the big winner of this battle but one thing is sure Yahoo has come up with the best website, but the funny thing is on the first page of Yahoo result page,  for the keyword ‘Lok Sabha Elections 2009’ we cannot find the Yahoo site – a mistake not made by Google.com