Justice at last! Everyone knows that Apple has long been one of the most influential brands in existence, and back in 2002 the company was rightfully named the "Global Brand of the Year" in an annual survey of thousands of "ad executives, brand managers, and academics" who read Brandchannel.com. But disaster struck in 2003, when Apple slipped to the number 2 spot and Google finished on top. Worse yet, Google edged out Apple again last year; granted, more people use search engines than have iPods, but most of them are searching for iPods, so we have to wonder about this Google-over-Apple thing, brandwise.

But like we said, order has finally been restored to the universe: faithful viewer Matt Banks pointed out that, according to Reuters, Apple's brand is officially back in first place (globally and in North America), while Google's got the Silver Medal Boo-Hoos this time around. Brandchannel editor Robin Rusch attributes Apple's advance to-- what else?-- the iPod's "avalanche of demand," which really gathered steam in the final quarter of the year to "put Apple in the lead." Google's plan to scan and index library books is cool and all, but it just doesn't have the branding oomph of yuletide knife-fights at the mall over the last silver iPod mini. After all, if people aren't spilling blood over something, just how influential can it be?

AtAT sources report that Google employees are shattered by their company's slide to second place, but remain hard at work on new technologies that they hope might win the "Best Brand" title back from Apple in 2006. Among these advances are: a search engine endorsed by an Irish rock supergroup; smaller, sleeker search engines that come in five different metallic colors; and a much lighter search engine that only returns up to 240 hits, but returns them in random order. Google execs are confident that such moves will put the company back on top next year, just as long as Apple doesn't release an iPod with a search engine within the next twelve months.

By the way, here's an interesting side-note: while Apple topped the North American list of "most influential brands," Pixar managed to squeeze into fifth place, just behind Starbucks, Target, and formerly-first Google. That means that on Steve Jobs's home turf, both of the companies for which he works his CEO mojo made the list of the continent's top five brands. Of course, no one who's familiar with the mind-bending power of Steve's Reality Distortion Field will be surprised, since perception of the strength of a brand is exactly the sort of thing that the RDF is best at controlling.

Here's hoping that Steve continues to use his powers for good instead of evil; otherwise one day we might all suddenly decide that we really like NECCO Wafers or something.