Google is the world's most valuable brand, knocking off fellow California-based technology giant Apple which has held the title for the past five years, according to Brand Finance's Global 500 most valuable brands list.
The Silicon Valley-based technology giant has continued to add to its brand perception this year with the launch of consumer products, such as its smartphone the Pixel, and formed a new business, Waymo, for its driverless car project.
Google derives most of its revenue from advertising, but its brand perception goes way beyond a simple search business.
Experiments, such as Waymo's last December, had a blind man successfully travel around Austin, Texas, with no one else, in a car without floor pedals or a steering wheel.
Google is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence and has hired a number of high-profile and well-regarded executives and computer scientists to head up projects in the area.
The company's brand value surged more than $US20 billion ($26.5 billion) to $US109.5 billion, while rival Apple's brand value plummeted by just under $US40 billion to $US107.1 billion.
"Google is continuing on the path of success it has been on for a while now," Brand Finance Australia managing director Mark Crowe said.
Apple brand has stalled
"But, there's no doubt when it comes to Apple, the brand has stalled, a number of its more recent innovations and products haven't gripped the market the way previous releases have."
Earlier this week Google's parent company, Alphabet, recorded fourth-quarter profit of $US5.3 billion, up 8.3 per cent from the previous corresponding period, but missed expectations. The company blamed a one-off tax adjustment for the miss.
Alphabet's YouTube was ranked 113th on the Brand Finance Global 500 list with a brand value of $US12.1 billion, up from $US9.7 billion in the previous year.
"It's a very simple thing, when it comes to sharing details of their experiments and innovations, Google is quite open about them, Apple is a very secretive organisation and really has relied on wowing their customers with new products," Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi said.
"Apple has had a harder time of releasing wow products with the departure of Steve Jobs."
Mr Fadaghi said Google's main search function still dominates people's daily lives – with vernacular such as "Google it".
"It also shows that maybe software is more important than hardware going forward for most technology companies when it comes to what consumer perceives of them," he said.
"You're likely to see Apple do more in the software space."
