Many tech giants’ reputations continue to take a hit amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to new rankings from an Axios/Harris 100 poll released Thursday.
The annual survey, which gauges the reputations of the most visible brands in the country, saw Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook fall in the standings while Apple improved its score. Twitter improved its standing, but just by a smidge.
Google took the biggest dip among the tech companies, moving from 24 in 2020 to 60 on Jan. 1 of this year.
The Department of Justice last year sued Alphabet’s Google for allegedly engaging in anticompetitive behavior to hold a monopoly over search and online advertising. The case has yet to go to trial. The department in March accused Google of dragging its feet in providing documents in preparation for the trial, while the search and advertising giant said the government was being unreasonable.
Amazon, which stood at No. 1 the first two years of the survey (2017-2018), dipped to 2, 3 and now 10. Apple started off strong at No. 5 in 2017, then dipped to 32 in 2019 before climbing to 16 this year.
TikTok and Reddit, both newcomers to the poll, stood at 78 and 94 respectively, while Patagonia snagged the top spot as Americans lean into companies with stronger political positions, according to Axios.
The Trump Organization came in at No. 100 behind Fox Corp. at 99.
California-based Patagonia endorsed two political candidates in the 2018 midterms and sued the Trump administration in 2017. Last September, the company added a political statement to its clothing tags: ”Vote the [expletives] out.”
“It refers to politicians from any party who deny or disregard the climate crisis and ignore science, not because they aren’t aware of it, but because their pockets are lined with money from oil and gas interests,” Tessa Byars, a spokesperson for the company, said at the time.
The poll is based on a survey of 42,395 Americans in a nationally representative sample conducted April 8-21. The most visible companies are then ranked by a second group of Americans across seven key dimensions of brand reputation to arrive at the final ranking.
An NBC News poll released last weekend found that 64 percent of Americans believe social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are doing more to divide the nation than bring it together.
That poll was carried out between April 17-20, with the margin of error for the 1,000 adult respondents at plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The margin of error for the 655 adults who use social media daily is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points, while for the 238 parents with children under the age of 18 it is plus or 6.4 percentage points.
Source: Newmax
