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A recent annual survey of 25,800 U.S. adults found that Amazon has the best corporate reputation for the third year in a row, while Google has dropped to the 28th place, down significantly from 8th where it sat last year. The Harris Poll Reputation Quotient, which began in 1999, conducted the survey from December 11 to January 12 and examined the participant sentiment of the 100 most visible corporate brands. Of additional interest is Apple’s ranking, which dropped from 5th to 29th.
In an interview with Reuters, Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema suggested that Google and Apple’s decline can be attributed to the fact that neither company has come up with truly industry-changing products as of late. Mr. Gerzema believes Google will improve its position moving forward once it cutting-edge technologies such as self-driving cars and other artificial intelligence solutions begin impacting consumers on a large scale.
While one survey might not have any particular sway of influence on a company’s state of affairs, the fact that both Google and Apple have fallen so significantly while Amazon remains top of the crop may itself be telling. Amazon, which only recently became profitable, had once been a cause for concern given the failure of its touted Fire Phone and its once-plentiful high-end Fire tablets like the 2013 HDX series. Indeed, reports were aplenty of the company that Jeff Bezos built going as far as laying off large portions of its top-secret hardware development Lab126 some years ago. And yet, today, Amazon is on a rhetorical roll as the company has found success with lower-end tablet devices, and arguably more importantly, its Echo line of AI speakers. Partnerships with firms like HTC and Lenovo’s Motorola have even seen the Alexa AI make its way into smartphones to directly compete with both the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, with some analysts going as far as to predict Amazon will become the world’s first company to break the $1 trillion valuation.