Those lil things before, that make it huge today

With little else going on as we wind down the week in front of a long weekend, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and revisit some of the (now) outrageous things that were being said at one point about the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad tablet, where Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) was supposed to fall in the social networking pecking order, and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)... and specifically where Google was supposed to be ranked against Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) in the search engine race.

Just bear in mind these statement - as crazy as they sound now - may have made some sense in the context around the time they were made. Still, it's amazing how wrong smart people can be. It kind of makes you wonder how wrong we are about today's hot topics.

No fanfare needed...

It may be tough to remember, but Facebook wasn't the pioneer of major social networking. The first outfit to validate the idea was MySpace, which began in 2004. Its rapid rise in popularity - and traffic - left most assuming it would forever hold that big lead. So, when Facebook began to heat up in 2005 (though it actually launched in 2004), observers were unimpressed, assuming 'first' also meant 'best'. In fact, Pete Cashmore at mashable.com penned a write-up on the matter, titling it " MySpace vs Facebook: MySpace Declares Victory " in 2007. He then went on to cite 6 specific reasons MySpace was 'in the lead'. He went on to say "that at current growth rates, Facebook is still no MySpace killer."

My how things have changed, even when many people - at the time - were in agreement with Cashmore. Is MySpace even still around?

If you think that's bad, can you even fathom the possibility that the Apple iPad, not to mention tablets in general, weren't expected to be all that popular? And those opinions aren't even that old.

It was only in March of 2010 that tomshardware.com posted a commentary from Tuan Nguyen suggesting that 'tablets suck'. His headline was an unsubtle "

5 Reasons Tablets Suck And You Won't Buy One.

" Two and a half years later, 34 million iPads have been sold. The numbers for all-time, total tablet sales are a tad fuzzier, but some think the figure is about 40 million. All combined, nearly 80 million tablets have been sold in the (roughly) two and a half years they've been readily available. They must not 'suck' that bad.

But hey, if you think that's wild, chew on this ...Stefan Constantinescu over at intomobile.com opined in August of 2009 that "the Apple Tablet: It doesn't exist, will never exist, and it is probably a 10 inch laptop." Given the oft-rumored but ne'er-seen Apple tablet up until that point, it wasn't a completely crazy statement to make at the time. But, Apple still managed to unveil the iPad - for real - in early 2010.

Last but certainly not least, can you ever imagine a time when Google wasn't the clear leader in the search engine race? Incredibly enough, you don't even have to go that far back in time to find when Google really was a 2nd and 3rd place market share holder for search... only about 10 years, to be precise. It wasn't until 2003 that Google took the lead over Yahoo! in the search contest. And even then it was a 'just barely' situation. In early 2003, Google only controlled 35.1% of the search market, while Yahoo! still controlled a similar 32.8% of it. MSN was a distant third, with 12.1% of the search market. Now Google owns about 70% of that market.

If you really want your mind blown, and a good laugh, you have to go back to the 2001 article about Google written by Pail Fests for CNET News

Remember, at the time all of what was sated was as true as anyone knew it to be. In retrospect, however, a great deal of it turned out to be exactly wrong. Here are several snippets from the write up:

Google vehemently disputes that it has designs on its portal customers' turf. Thus far, its reputation as a search specialist with no wider ambitions has helped it maintain good relations with the portals, who provide its primary revenue. About 130 sites license Google's search engine, including Yahoo and Netcenter, a property of AOL Time Warner. "The fact is that we have 130 customers that we power search for," said Omid Kordestani, Google's vice president of business development and sales. "They don't feel we're competing with them, and we're comfortable with that model. I use my favorite portals for sending e-mails, instant messaging, tracking stock portfolios--all these things Google isn't doing."

Uhhh... Google is doing most of those things now, and the company has not only started to compete with Yahoo! and other portals (that it was actually powering), it's beaten the daylights out of them.

Although Google says it's not preparing to offer standard portal services such as free e-mail, it is steadily adding features....As for adding communications applications such as e-mail and instant messaging, Kordestani flatly ruled it out.

That's true - Google was adding features, and continues to do so to this day. It also started its own e-mail service on a beta test basis in 2004, and opened it up to everyone by 2007... just like it said it wasn't going to do.