Danah posts an amusing article comparing the 3 big search companies (Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google) to countries.

Microsoft is Germany, Yahoo! is Japan and Google is the US.

Also mentioned in the comments are Apple (Netherlands), Sun (France), Verisign (Panama), SCO (North Korea), Ask.com (Australia), Grokster (Cuba), and del.icio.us (Chechnya).

So head over to apophenia and read why each company has been associated with a specific country.