10 tech gadgets and services that didn’t exist when Rosetta comet probe left Earth in 2004

The Philae lander is about to leave the Rosetta spacecraft and begin its descent toward a comet racing hundreds of millions of miles from Earth. It’s been an astonishing journey for Rosetta, a vehicle designed in the late 1990s and hurled into space back in March 2004.

Building any kind of device to last a decade seems downright quaint in these days of continuous high-tech upheaval. But as the descent begins today, I got to thinking about how much things have changed in the 10 years since Rosetta launched. By Silicon Valley standards, that’s a lifetime. In 2004, most of the tech industry was still climbing out of the rubble of the dot-com bust.

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Just how much have things changed? Well, here are 10 gadgets and services that didn’t even exist when Rosetta left Earth:

1. Twitter: March 2006. The company celebrates 8.5 years of unprofitability as Philae makes it historic descent.

2. The iPhone: June 2007. There were many smartphones before it, but it’s not overstating it to say this one changed everything.

3. YouTube: Started February 2005. The cat video craze was still largely confined to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

4. Amazon’s Kindle Reader: November 2007. We all still thought Amazon just wanted to be Wal-Mart in 2004.

5. Windows Vista: January 2007. Actually, I think we all just skipped this one and kept right on using Windows XP, which, come to think of it, could really be the Rosetta probe of operating systems given its longevity!

6. Google Maps: February 2005. I literally cannot remember life before Google Maps. Everything that happened before then was a total blur. How did I get up and leave the house every morning without it?

7. Firefox browser: November 2004. My god, we were all still using Explorer. Google Chrome wasn’t even a dream. It’s a wonder the Internet survived this long.

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8. 4G wireless networks: March 2008. Many of us were still fumbling around on 2G or EDGE networks as 3G was just making its way into our lives. True mobile broadband was yet to come. These were dark times, indeed.

9. Netflix streaming: February 2007. When Rosetta left us, we were all still eagerly rushing to the mailbox awaiting our new red envelope from Netflix. Remember DVDs?

10. Flip Video: May 2006. It would be some time before our smartphones were good enough to take decent video. In the meantime, Flip cameras combined with YouTube unleashed a video revolution.

Bonus: Some kid named Mark Zuckerburg started a social network in his dorm room in February 2004. Sounds promising. Definitely one to watch.

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