Google, eBay and Amazon among UK's favourite brands

In a survey of the UK's favourite brands, internet superstars Google, eBay and Amazon all scored highly, with the search engine taking top spot.Google earned $10.6 billion (5.3 billion pounds) in 2006 and has expanded its portfolio rapidly, offering new services such as satellite maps, photo management software and even database services.The survey of 2,412 consumers was conducted by Marketing magazine and reflects the rise of online companies as strong consumer brands, the magazine said.Online retail giant Amazon moved up the chart from seventeenth place last year to the third spot this year.Auction site eBay achieved fifth spot.It wasn't good news for all internet brands however; AOL was labelled as one of the "most hated" brands in the UK, being rated as the third worst by consumers.Despite the disappointing results of the survey for AOL, its parent company Time Warner recently announced that the internet advertising revenue growth had been good on the platform.AOL's ad revenue grew by 35 per cent during the first quarter of 2007 and operating income at the internet company grew by 27 per cent to $542 million, as the company capitalised on ad revenue from its popular free email service. Figures released last week by the internet marketing research firm comScore for the month of March showed Google is still the most popular UK site by traffic. Google's sites continued to retain the top spot, with 27.3 million visitors. Second and third place went to Microsoft sites and eBay, with 26.8 and 22 million visitors respectively