For as long as I remember thinking, Exxon (now Exxon Mobil) was the most valuable company in the world. That changed this year.

Apple passed Exxon Mobil, and now Exxon Mobil is more than $80 billion behind Apple, surely never to catch up again. (Peak oil has passed, but that is another subject).

Say you had asked me at Christmas 1997 who the two most valuable tech companies would be at Christmas 2012, fifteen years in the future.

If my answer would have been that number 1 would be Apple, and number 2 would be a little company called Google that would not even be founded until September 4, 1998 in the Internet search engine business – you would have called me insane.

Microsoft was worth $164 billion at that time. Exxon $144 billion, Apple about $2.6 billion, and Google didn’t exist. Zero.

You might also notice that Apple is worth more than Microsoft and Google combined.

What a difference 15 years make.