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This statistic presents a ranking of the market capitalization of selected U.S. tech and internet companies in 2006, and from 2014 to 2020. Apple's market cap soared from * billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to **** trillion dollars in 2020. Apple's market cap pushed the company ahead of last year's leader Microsoft.

Public offerings of tech and internet companies

A public offering is the offering of securities of a company or a similar corporation to the public. Generally, the securities are to be listed on a stock exchange. The initial public offering (IPO) of a company occurs when a company offers its shares for the first time for public ownership and trading. 

Hardware companies such as Apple or IBM have been traded publicly for a while but younger, online-based companies such as Google or most notably Facebook and most recently, Snap Inc. have been generating a lot of buzz surrounding their IPOs and subsequent stock prices. Facebook’s initial public offering was intensely hyped over months with projections of a 100 billion US dollar valuation but it dwindled down to a range of ** to ** billion US dollars prior to the listing.

Other tech stock performances have been more stable – both online retailer Amazon and search and digital advertising giant Google’s - now Alphabet's - shares have been on a more upwards trend. The most impressive development however came from Apple which totally changed its stock performance after the 2008 introduction of the iPhone. Since then, the company has been catapulted to the top of the smartphone market, multiplying its market capitalization as well as regularly being ranked as one of the most valuable brands worldwide.