No, almost everybody saw Google rising. Their capture of the search market and the relatively quick translation of sales from that was a very prominent event in

No, almost everybody saw Google rising. Their capture of the search market and the relatively quick translation of sales from that was a very prominent event in tech circles. And Facebook wasn't relevant during the initial establishment and rise of Google (Facebook's first billion dollar sales year was 2010, 12 years after the founding of Google). Steve Ballmer (then CEO of Microsoft) swore he'd kill Google and bury Eric Schmidt - this is 2005 or earlier. Google's sales for 2004 for reference were $3.18 billion (for Alphabet now it's $282 billion). https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-vowed-to-kill-google/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-v...