Yahoo Still Not the World's No. 1 Brand

No big surprise here. Google is the single most powerful brand in the world. Though it did little promotional advertising, the company for the second consecutive year claimed the top spot on Millward Brown Optimor’s annual BrandZ™ Ranking–a list of the top 100 most powerful global brands.

According to the market research firm’s assessment of financial performance and consumer sentiment, Google’s (GOOG) brand alone is worth some $86 billion–$14.6 billion more than GE’s (GE) and $15.2 billion more than Microsoft’s (MSFT). Impressive. Especially since that $86 billion represents a 30% jump from 2007.

That said, Google is not the big winner in the year-over-year increase in the tech brand-value competition. That honor belongs to Apple (AAPL), whose brand grew in value by 123%.

The big losers? No surprises here, either. Yahoo’s (YHOO) brand slipped 13% in value year-over-year, Motorola’s (MOT) 30%.