What do you think of when you hear the word apple? A fruit that keeps the doctor away? George Washington? Pie? Nope.

How about consumer electronics. Welcome to 2009.

Brands often become ubiquitous words for their products, like Kleenex facial tissues. But who would have predicted 50 years ago that the fruit kids brought their teachers as a gift would be replaced in our language by a brand name?

There are hundreds of types of apples that can be used in countless recipes, but the topic cloud for the word “apple” (pulled from millions of Internet conversations over the last year) shows that technology-related words were far more prominent than recipe or baking.

To build the trend chart below, we used a massive query including all Apple products (iPod, iPhone, Macbook, Mac, etc.), software (iWork, iLife, etc.) as well as words associated with Apple (technology, software, computer, apps, features, developers, etc.) compared to all other apple-related content (excluding Big Apple, Fiona Apple, etc.).

What are some other examples of successful branding? What do you think of first when you hear the word windows?