“After years at the top, Apple’s brand appeal suddenly appears eclipsed by Google,” Jonny Evans writes for Apple Must.
Evans wonders, “Might it be connected with the fact that Google News is the world’s main conduit for general news information these days, and Google controls the algorithms which decide the sites who get the traffic, and what sort of stories it will dispense that traffic (and their business), too?”
“Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time the company has used search results to favour its own business above others,” Evans writes, “but in this case all I can do is ask the question: ‘Has Google gone thermonuclear?'”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Google overtakes Apple to become 2014 BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brand – May 21, 2014
Say it ain’t so….
It ain’t so. See below.
Time to switch…
https://duckduckgo.com
Hmm – the only options for search in the menubar is Bing, Google and Yahoo. I’m using Yahoo but it would be cool if other search engines could be used.
you can get a widget at duck duck go that will add a search bar line in Safari.
Thanks for this tip. I have wanted to try duckduckgo for a long time but could not figure out how to set it as my default, which greatly limited its practicality. I just downloaded the extension and it seems to work well so far. If I like it, I will be sure to pass the tip along to family and friends.
Here is a note in case useful to others: After downloading the duckduckgo extension, go to Safari /Preferences/ Extensions/ and be sure to toggle the extension on. (This is also where you would go to uninstall the extension if you don’t like it.) Note that when you open Safari, your officially-selected default search engine for your Mac (ie, Google, Bing, or Yahoo) will still appear in light-grey lettering in the search field. But when you enter a query, the answer will be seamlessly provided by duckduckgo. Pretty cool. Thanks again.
yw
Google is a brand? WTF?????
What do they make? Can I go out and buy products in a shop like other brands?
I’ve been de-googled for almost 4 years now and have never missed them.
BUT OF COURSE – or should I say Par for the course for google – the most untrusted brand besides SAMDUNG!
No, this is a result of Google’s PR department pushing all the beta and R&D stuff Google is funding to take attention off of Google’s poor mobile ad sales performance.
Apple doesn’t publicize products it is developing, and so Apple doesn’t get any of the “I Want That!” PR that Google is getting right now. However, Google’s bump (and Apple’s drop) will end soon as people realize that Google never finishes any project it starts.
Good thing Google isn’t running SpaceX or we’d never get another satellite into orbit and all the astronauts on the ISS would starve.
Failure to Launch, indeed!
damn, that’s what my girlfriend whispered to me last night.
Now way. Bunch of whiners.
Many top ranking sites like Cnet regularly cover
insightful stories about struggling Apple and their desperate attempts to remain relevant. Android seems to be winning at everything, so it’s good to read up on how the others carve out ther little markets.
I’d rather believe the top ranking articles over a few bloggers, since they’re ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd place like awards.
They’re awards people.
Thanks for the insight, anonymous coward!
S
I knew I’d have to use it, damn.
‘insightful stories’, ‘struggling Apple’, ‘desperate attempts’, ‘remain relevant’, etc. etc.
You could at least to making SOME attempt to sound like you’re not just copying hackneyed phrases out of assorted Apple-hater blather.
You missed this part.
(Sarcasm)
highly plausible. Sounds like a scheme cooked up by their pocked face PR goon/lead cheerleader Schmidt and Steve Jobs wanna-be Dorky Page after a long night of playing twister while eating gummi bears
you left out “in their underwear”!
Errgh, what a horrible image !
As I pointed out earlier today, BrandZ is all alone in its down rating of Apple’s brand. Sounds kind of fishy, eh?
http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/
Apple #1
Google #5
http://brandirectory.com/league_tables/table/global-500-2014
Apple #1
Google #3
The Score: 2 to 1. You lose BrandZ.
It’s beyond fishy…it STINKS. 😛
Hey, when you are down and need to be pumped up, buy a market survey that makes you look good.
PR works … until your sales numbers slow or eventually drop.
The real problem is that the formulas used by each company to determine brand value is more secretive and convoluted, and uses more pure guesswork, than the formulas used to calculate your credit score.
And each result is about as accurate.
Good point.
I’ve noticed this for the last year or two.
Do a Google News search for iPhone. The auto-suggestions will kick in shortly. Notice anything missing in the list? iPhone 5s. Why would the top selling, newest phone not be in there?
Also, over the last year or so I noticed (repeatedly) the “quality” of the Apple news articles was terrible. The sites Google linked to were generally not high quality mainstream sites. Many times they were low quality (either foreign-based sites I’ve never heard of or no-name “investing” sites). I just ran a search though, and this issue appears to be resolved. The results I got back looked fine.
I did what you suggested and got the list of “iPhone4s, iPhone5, iPhone6”..
Try calling up a chart for AAPL on Google and on Yahoo. Notice the difference in the news articles attached to the chart. Yahoo’s attached articles will be both positive and negative from sources like WSJ, Marketwatch, Reuters, etc. Google’s attached articles will be uniformly negative articles from sources like InsiderMonkey, PotentialTrader, etc. The Yahoo articles will be decent journalistic efforts that are usually professional quality. The Google articles read as if written by someone for whom English is a second language, and they are high school quality. It’s very obvious that Google purposely chooses negative articles, even though they are poorly written, to attach to the AAPL stock chart.
Who uses Google search anymore ?
Oh, must be the fAndroids.
That explains it.
I would gladly drop Google search if I could find a decent alternative but none are nearly as good.
The same is true for Google Maps. It’s way better than Apple Maps.
As much as I hate Google, I still need something that works well to break away.
see my comments re: duckduckgo in a previous post/
Last week I did a time search on YT and Google to read reactions about the PBS’s Frontline program covering the NSA spying scandals. There was zero videos on YouTube and one or two links on Google. The link from Google was to RT. I did the same search on Yahoo and found many timely links. Google is censoring and can not be trusted.
Might it also have something to do with Apples change in product cycles. Were they used to have some type of major announcement. New Product, upgrade or other launch about every 3 months to keep them selves in the current news cycle. They have pretty much dropped to September\October big announcement and not much else to keep the media machine fed. This is a management issue and 1 that could easily be fixed if Tim was on his game.
The truth is Google is the spookiest mass surveillence company outside of North Korea. And all google drives are known to be realtime mirrored to NSA digital forensics cloud storage system. Their brand image is similar to the East German Stasi and about as popular.
“hope and change.”
I don’t think you need the “outside of North Korea” qualifier.
Baloney.
Google is only at 5 percent of the market in china.
This just the WS shysters’ way of trying to push google pps. They want to counteract the big loss to ORACLE. They need to push the stock price up because from here on google will lose in all the suits oracle has leveled against them.
IMPOSSIBLE!
do no evil Google couldn’t do that!
if you believe that you’ll think they might stoop to stealing from their friend and mentor and having a mole-like Board member leak apple secrets…
if you believe that you’ll side with the numerous court awards where Google was fined for stealing artists and writers works to be digitized, cases where it snooped on houses wifi signals , or when it hacked through Safari encryption…
IMPOSSIBLE.
say it ain’t so….
😉
and the tin foil hat is snug on this guy.
What is it they say about the devil? His best trick was convincing people he doesn’t exist?
Google is so transparently evil, having crossed the Rubicon long ago that their now tragic-comic mantra “Don’t be Evil” is both a mark of horror and humor. I am certain there are thousands of well meaning people at Google who rationalize data theft, idea theft, overt competitive tactics and leverage as just business. But at some point you become blinded to what is right. And right about now…Most Google employees should be issued walking canes and dark glasses. They should be ashamed.