May 13 2008
Bill Gates Predicts End Of Yellow Pages
“Well, the Yellow Pages are going to be used less and less.” Gates believes that there will soon be a direct mobile link between voice and data. A more realistic step has to do with what’s happening already with the use of sites like Workpost.com. Consumers are finding new ways to get things done more efficiently without using the yellow pages.
While Gates has no doubt built a massive fortune from selling operating systems and software of dubious quality, his skills as a predictor of the future are hardly anywhere near as good. Due to the power of the Internet, there are a plethora of clippings, memos, books, and transcripts which can be used to track Good Old Bill’s past predictions so we can compare them with his most recent predicts of death for print Yellow Pages. Here’s but a few:
World Economic Forum, 2004: “Two years from now, spam will be solved.”
I’m not sure what medication Good Old Bill is on these days, but even with Microsoft’s horrible “advances” in spam filtering technologies, anyone can tell him we’re not even close to solving this issue. Instead over 80% of all email is now considered spam despite Federal anti-spamming laws.
Comdex, 2001: “So next year a lot of people in the audience, I hope, will be taking their notes with those Tablet PCs.”
Maybe he should have said “pray” instead of “I hope”. No matter how you look at it, Gates way overestimating the market for the pen-based computers. Microsoft has tried to boost usage, most recently by even incorporating some of the Tablet PC features into its crappy new Vista operating system.
Comdex, 1996: Speaking about newspapers, Gates predicted that the Web would ultimately create a “substitution effect,” shifting readers away from print and onto Web sites. Sound familiar??
Wow, he actually got this one right. Many people are now getting their news online, but not only from newspaper sites. At the same conference where he made his most recent Yellow Pages remarks, he also observed that the newspaper industry is facing a “tough, wrenching change,” because “the number of people who actually buy, subscribe to the newspaper and read it has started an inexorable decline.” I agree, but I can only assume he never grew up having breakfast with the morning paper.
OS/2 Programmer’s Guide, 1987: “I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time.”
I loved that one. It was the opening line in the Guide. While OS/2 was an important program, Microsoft Windows operating systems now run more than 90% of the world’s personal computers. How disappointing is it that after some 5 years and an estimated $10 billion in development, the Vista operating system can be such a piece of useless garbage??
But if you really want one final check of his predications skills, go to his book “The Road Ahead” (1995) to see how accurate he has been. In reality, he is no better a forecaster of the future than your ordinary TV meteorologist. And we all know how accurate they are at predicting the weather even three days ahead despite of the technology they now have at their disposal.