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Google Overtakes Apple As the World's Most Valuable Brand
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes in with news that global market research agency Millward Brown has proclaimed Google as the world's most valuable brand. "US search engine Google has overtaken rival technology titan Apple as the world's top brand in terms of value, global market research agency Millward Brown said Wednesday. Google's brand value shot up 40 percent in a year to $158.84 billion (115 billion euros), Millward Brown said in its 2014 100 Top BrandZ report. 'Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,' said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France. Apple, which dominated the top position for three straight years, saw its brand value fall by 20 percent to $147.88 billion."
I can buy an iPhone, iPad, Windows OS, Microsoft Office (or it's subscription). What exactly does Google sell apart from Ads (and our data)? Google Fiber is not available worldwide. Gmail is awesome even when free. Google glass does not seem like it will be usable because of the backlash. How does Google's brand value serve them when compared to the likes of Apple & Microsoft?
Don't blame the market for supplying what society demands.
The question is, how much would you pay to access Google without ads? If they started offering a solution without ads for $2 a month would it be worth it to you? Sure, they probably don't make $2 worth of ad clicks off most people, but arranging the billing system for millions for users would make the system much more costly to run. So, now we got Google without ads. That's $2 a month. Then add Slashdot. Maybe they only charge $0.50 a month. Add on facebook, that's another $2 a month. Reddit might be $1 a month. New York Times, there's another $1. Pretty soon the number start to add up and you're easily paying $20 a month just to access websites without ads. Maybe somebody gets a whole bunch of sites together so you can pay 1 fee to access all the sites that use this service ad free. But there's sites still not using this service so you end up paying others to be ad-free.
To make any of the above work, you have to be logged in any time you are accessing the ad-free sites you are paying for, so they have a flawless way of tracking all the pages you are visiting on their site. Currently I can go to Google in Incognito mode, do some searches, and then next time I come back, I'm a completely different person, so tracking is limited. With a service you pay for, you are logged in, so they are able to accumulate a lot of information about you.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.