Brian Prince over at eweek reminds us of one of the dumbest things we’ve ever heard from anyone in the tech industry.
This month marks the five year anniversary of a bold prediction by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who prophesized at the World Economic Forum in 2004 the spam problem would be solved in two years. Turns out, it was not a Nostradamus moment for IT security.
Predicting security trends is not an exact science.
A prime case in point is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who predicted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January of 2004 that spam would be “solved” within two years. Fast forward to 2009 – spam remains a nuisance to corporate networks and consumers alike.
A key part of Gates’ prediction was that it we would have the option to charge people to send us e-mails. If a relative sent you an e-mail, for example, you could let it in for free. However, if the e-mail came from an unknown address, you could charge them money.
Of course this would never work. I blogged at the time (on a different blog) that the only reason he said it was because he was hoping Microsoft would handle the payment processing.
The whole thing was absolutely ridiculous. Bill Gates must be the dumbest billionaire on record. It’s ironic somebody who knows so little about technology became the richest man in the world because of it.