Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Said the Internet Would Be No Bigger Than the Fax Machine. Today the Internet Economy Is Worth $14 Trillion.

Writing in Red Herring magazine, future Nobel laureate Paul Krugman confidently predicted that most people "have nothing to say to each other" and the internet would fizzle out by 2005. This was the same year Google was founded. Amazon was a 4-year-old bookstore. Netflix still mailed DVDs. By 2005, YouTube launched, Facebook had 6 million users, and e-commerce hit $100 billion. Today, the global digital economy is worth over $14 trillion. The fax machine industry? It peaked in 1997. When later confronted with this quote, Krugman said it was meant to be "fun and provocative" rather than "careful forecasting." A Nobel Prize in Economics, ladies and gentlemen.