It's useful to keep these numbers in perspective in all the excitement. Browse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue and convince yourself that we're not quite living in a virtual world yet. The list is dominated by giant oil companies, with Exxon and Shell with $370 billion in annual revenues a piece (that's more than the GDP of all but around 25 nations). Manufacturing is also pretty well represented (Toyota: $240 billion in revenue in 2010). On the other hand, Apple now apparently outsells Boeing. That's pretty impressive.
The picture I was looking at is weight in the economy. We - I guess I am making some assumptions about the audience here - sometimes get so caught up in the kinds of things that are important to us, that we forget that this is not the whole world. I mean, Google+ vs. Facebook is fascinating, but this is probably not the most momentous conflict that history will record for the early 21st century.
And speaking of profit, apparently Exxon made $11 billion last quarter - more than the revenue number we're talking about here. Yeah, the margin is lower, but...
