NetCo's Rank as Best in Brand-Name Toplist

eBay joins Google & YouTube among best; "Bad Girls" are bad brands behind Glitter Gultch

A short-list of some of the Internet's premier companies topped a study of best brands announced Friday. Yet your notion of just what a "brand" is may challenged at the news that Las Vegas came in at #2, just behind Google for the top spot on the list. A study co-produced by the marketing firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates measured perceptions of more than 300 names, places and brands based on news reports. iPod ranked third behind Google and Las Vegas, followed by YouTube (a company few of us had heard of, let alone held in high esteem a year ago) came in just in front of eBay in the top five. Yahoo, Target, Oprah, Sony and the NFL round out the top ten.

The worst performing "brand names" include "bad girls" Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. (Yes, they are brand names!)

In an age when what separates the commercial from the dubiously artistic is a line skinnier than a g-string, we'd like to see "Brand Britney" and "Product Paris" take on a stronger resemblance to generic "Plain Wrap" brands. C'mon already, girls - put some clothes on, will ya? Like, when she is held in lower esteem than Las Vegas, former Mousekateer Britney's got issues.