Last year, economies slowed and entered recessions. Market declines were reminiscent of the 1930s. Volatility set records. Companies floped and filed for bankruptcy protection. Many deals died or were killed. Things changed in the world and in the United States.

The world of the Web saw its fair share of history as well. The segments largest-ever merger was proposed by Microsoft. And by rebuffing its overtures, Yahoo made arguably one of the worst decisions of the year, in our view. Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick was finalized, but its search-advertising business arrangement with Yahoo was derailed. The iPhone and other super smartphones gave citizens more ways to access the Web. Industry legends Meg Whitman and Jerry Yang left their posts at eBay and Yahoo, respectively.

Last year, we professed eight prognostications about many things World Wide Web. We had some hits and some misses.

We predicted a blockbuster financial transaction would be announced in 2008. We said that

Google would continue to form inroads in the mobile segment, but not claim wireless spectrum or become a mobile carrier. We thought VeriSign would exit the substance delivery space and saw increasing competition and pressure on category leader Akamai. We projected that Googles gross revenues would increase 39 percent [through three quarters, they rose 37 percent, even though our current 2008 growth forecast is 33 percent].

We thought Yahoo would have a better 2008 than 2007. It’s probably fair to say that we were painfully close in that prediction, but resoundingly wrong nonetheless. We thought eBay would plus do better by users and shareholders, but were incorrect again.

Let’s move on to our predictions for 2009, starting with a few prognostications about Google, which notwithstanding its stock’s more than 50 percent drop in 2008, is still the world’s largest Net company.

We think Google will continue to gain search market share…

Orginal post by Mike

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