Forbes and New York branding consultancy Vivaldi Partners have recently selected world's top 20 brands that have had fastest increase in brand value during the past four years. Of the top ten brands, Apple, BlackBerry, Google, Amazon, Yahoo and ebay are all Internet related companies.

Analysts reckons these brands with fastest value increase may surpass Coca-Cola to be world's most valuable brands.

Forbes' statistics shows Coca-Cola is worth US$ 55 bln at present, but its brand value has been declining for four consecutive years by 4percent annually. By contrast value of the Internet brands Google has soared 36 percent, or US$ 4.8 bln. Apple computer is No.1 in terms of growth rate with 38 percent. The rate for BlackBerry, Amazon, Yahoo and ebay are 36 percent, 35 percent, 33 percent and 31 percent respectively.

In a ranking of world top 500 companies published by UK's Financial Times, Google has entered top 100 with a market value of US$ 50 bln.

By People's Daily Online