Bill Gates wrong this time

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Gates said that the internet would revolutionize TV in five years. al-Reuters:

The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) chairman
Bill Gates said on Saturday.

"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he told business leaders and politicians at the
World Economic Forum.

The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.'s (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.

In the years ahead, more and more viewers will hanker after the flexibility offered by online video and abandon conventional broadcast television, with its fixed program slots and advertisements that interrupt shows, Gates said.

"Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it," he said.

"Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior."

We'll revisit this in January 2012. The internet is way, way too slow for what we all want to do -- video, movies, TV, and other apps requiring blistering speed. And that won't change by 2012.