Millward Brown’s most recent brand index has placed six technology companies in the top 10, with Apple taking the top spot from Google. Apple is now valued at £93bn (a rise of 84%), whilst Google is valued at $111.5bn (a drop of 2%).

Apple’s strong brand value will not come as a surprise to many people. Us media types are usually found walking through Central London clutching on to iPhones, or if we are feeling especially important that day, an iPad. These two products have been Apple’s major successes in recent years, allowing the brand to appeal to a consumer market and an enterprise market simultaneously. They have essentially done this by making their products really cool and really useful at the same time – or at least giving us enough of an argument to convince our IT managers that we simply can’t live without an iPhone, other PR agencies would surely mock us if we turned up with a, god forbid, Nokia.

Google on the other hand have had a year of crisis after crisis. The campaigners for data privacy always seem to end up at the door of Google and have such hurt their brand image. They now appear to be the evil company that they are, having managed to keep the ‘funky start-up’ image going for far longer than deserved. However, a 2% drop isn’t exactly crisis times. They are still seen as a company pushing technological innovation – their work with Twitter during the Egypt crisis was a massive coup for the brand name in that respect.

The other interesting mover in the index is Facebook, which made its debut in the top 100 at 35; achieving the highest increase in brand value at 246 percent. I am sure that next year we will see Facebook sore into the top 20, if not the top 10, as Google, Facebook and Apple continue to be the technology brands making the most noise. I am sare that Microsoft and IBM will forever be a permanent fixture in the top 10 but it these three that dominate our consciousness.