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For the time being, Microsoft's market capitalization is about $812 billion. Apple's is slightly less.
The largely symbolic milestone came less than two months after Apple's market cap reached a peak above $1.12 trillion, significantly above Microsoft's peak of $887 billion. Apple was even the first US company with a $1 trillion valuation. But since then, Apple's stock has gotten whacked based on fears of slowing iPhone demand, seemingly confirmed by the company when it said on November 1 that it would no longer disclose iPhone unit sales.
The last time that Microsoft was more valuable than Apple was back in 2010 - eons ago in the fast-moving technology market.
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On the day that Apple overtook Microsoft back then, Apple was worth only about $222 billion in terms of total market capitalization - compared to Microsoft's $219 billion. (Before that, the last time the two companies switched places was in 1989.)
In fact, just a quick recap of what products were on the market back then will make you realize it was an entirely different era:
Apple was also still selling a ton of iPods, including the iPod Classic.
You could get a MacBook computer in white if you wanted.
There aren't just big changes in terms of hardware. This is what Facebook looked like in 2010.
Facebook wouldn't IPO for two more years. On Monday, it had a market capitalization of $390 billion.
Instagram did not yet exist.
It launched in 2011 and this is what it looked like then.
The president was Barack Obama, who was wrapping up the first half of his first term.
That year, Business Insider declared Groupon, Foursquare, Amazon Kindle, Netflix streaming, and Flipboard as some of the top winners in tech that year.
Kindles still had physical keyboards.
Some of the "flops" from that year included Google Buzz, Microsoft's "Kin" phones, and iTunes Ping, a short-lived social network from Apple.
Of course, nothing really changes when Microsoft and Apple trade places in terms of total market value. But it's still a good opportunity to remember how much can change in eight years.
