​Amazon becomes world’s most valuable brand, beating Google and Apple

With a brand value of $315.5 billion, Amazon is now more valuable than Apple and Google, according to BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand ranking 2019.

“It was not a surprise, but it was not inevitable,” wrote BrandZ CEO David Roth, adding that few could have predicted the company’s success when it was just an online bookseller in the 1990s. Roth added: “With its devotion to removing friction from every part of the customer experience, Amazon has changed what consumers expect from brands. With its pioneering efforts in cloud computing, Amazon has changed what businesses expect from their suppliers and partners.”

Apple comes second at $309.5 billion, and Google is third at $309 billion. BrandZ bases its annual report on companies’ financial performance, using data from Kantar Worldpanel, and interviews with millions of consumers.

One reason Amazon tops the list is because it’s dominating a variety of retail categories, Doreen Wang, Kantar’s global head of BrandZ, toldCNBC.

“Amazon’s phenomenal brand value growth of almost $108 billion in the last year demonstrates how brands are now less anchored to individual categories and regions,” she said. “The boundaries are blurring as technology fluency allow brands, such as Amazon, Google and Alibaba, to offer a range of services across multiple consumer touchpoints.”

Amazon has been positioning itself to become much more than an online retailer. In the past year, the company has invested billions of dollars in new ventures, including self-driving car start-up Aurora, online pharmacy PillPack, food-delivery company Deliveroo, a new headquarters, electric truck start-up Rivian, and Project Kuiper, which would provide high-speed internet service via thousands of satellites.

“Brands need to understand the value this type of model can create and should embrace its approach to be successful in the future,” Roth told CNBC.

But some — namely, President Donald Trump — have expressed concern over the mammoth success of companies like Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook.

“There is something going on in terms of monopoly,” Trump told CNBC on Monday.

Last week, reports suggested that the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice could soon open antitrust investigations into big tech companies. This increased scrutiny seems to be coming from both sides of the aisle.

Amazon responded to Warren: “And sellers aren’t being ‘knocked out’ – they’re seeing record sales every year.”