Similar Search Results: Google Wins

Google hogged technology headlines and spread its ubiquity (which is a nice way of saying "world dominance") throughout 2006. The dust barely cleared on its US$ 900 million deal with News Corporation to provide service to sites such as MySpace when it purchased video site and workplace time-waster (as well as third-place finisher) YouTube for $1.65 billion. But perhaps its most noteworthy brand achievement last year was the addition of the verb "to google" in two major English-language dictionaries. (More valuable to shareholders was the stock price cracking the $500 barrier.)

Apple barely edges YouTube for the runner-up slot. The company launched its first computers powered by Intel processors (as it phased out those by Motorola), the iTunes Music Store sold its 1 billionth song, and so far, people haven't been chucking their iPods for the Microsoft Zune. Apple CEO/deity Steve Jobs has (so far) survived an investigation concerning backdated options; similar scandals have felled several other CEOs. In 2007 Jobs plans to walk on water, which he will then turn into wine.

Following Apple are two Readers' Choice newcomers: the aforementioned YouTube, and the spreading-like-Google Wikipedia. The backbone of both brands is user-created content: one allows you to watch (or upload your own version of) a "Mentos eruption" that occurs when you slip the chewy candies into a bottle of diet cola, while the other details why this junk-food fireworks takes place.

YouTube launched in 2005, and this year, with 20 million monthly visitors, exploded like Mentos in Diet Coke and was named Time's "Invention of the Year." And did we mention that Google bought it for $1.65 billion in stock?

Since its creation comparatively eons ago (2001), Wikipedia grew slowly and steadily (pages in well over 100 languages, with more than 1.5 million articles on the English version alone) as it became the premier—if not always accurate—online research tool.

In a virtual tie for fifth place are perennial favorites Starbucks and Nokia, proving caffeine and cellphones haven't gone out of style. In 2006, the java giant added more franchises in China and also branched into the entertainment business as one of the producers of the film Akeelah and the Bee. Nokia and Siemens AG created one of the world's largest network firms, called Nokia Siemens Networks, by merging their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses.

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