Here in Marseille, I read in the Financial Times “Global Brands” Special Report of 23-April-2007 placed Google top of the heap in the annual ranking of the world’s brands carried out by the FT and Millard Brown Optimor.

Wow! The FT also has an article on Google here – interesting reading, especially for fans of misspellings. Interestingly, Yahoo! come in at number 42 in the rankings. Google and Yahoo have different approaches to localization. Perhaps there’s something to be learned there, or about the power of cool products in the participatory Web 2.0 age relying (largely) on “social” translation over the effort of localizing volumes of content through “traditional” means? The name “Google” doesn’t need any localization at all for people to know what it’s about. Plus the company relies on volunteers for a bunch of languages.

Perhaps the good folks at Common Sense Advisory will tell us!