Don't Fear Public Flops

The Google name is stronger than ever: In this year's ranking it gained 46 percent in brand value -- the biggest year-over-year rise of any company ever on the list. Revenues climbed by 105 percent last year. With market share in Internet search still surging, it can afford to gamble with its universally recognizable brand.

    That allows Google to launch a slew of new products with small investments, gain valuable user input at early stages of development, and in turn challenge market leaders such as Microsoft in mature businesses. "The way you find really successful innovation is to release five things and hope that one or two of them really take off," says product czar Marissa Mayer.

When your brand is a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary, you can weather the sting of a few product flops. In the process you can harness the power of early releases, when users offer tons of suggestions, and engineers can fold in upgrades and adapt on the fly. That's what the company did with Google Video, which was expanded to let people upload and showcase their own creations.

Another example: When Google initially launched Gmail in 2004, it scared some would-be customers by scanning e-mails for keywords and serving up ads relevant to their content. Since then the company has invited Web critics and consumer advocates to weigh in during the test phases of other new offerings.

    Google's brand may not always ride this high. Failed product tests can pile up and dent all the positive brand buzz. That's a worry, particularly since only a few of its services beyond search have found real acclaim, much less significant new revenue.

    Still, the company has a toehold almost everywhere and a knack for speed. In the past year it has launched an online finance site, a spreadsheet tool, and a word processor, and it plans to resell radio and TV ad time to its ad clients. Several of these may never be big cash machines, but with revenues growing 77 percent last quarter, it's hard to blame Google for failing in small ways when it's winning so big on the Street.