Facebook, price comparison portals, intelligent advertising – all technologies that are part of everyday life for us today. In 1999, most people would have thought it all science fiction, but Microsoft founder Bill Gates already saw it coming.
In 1999, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, published his book “Business @ the speed of thought” and gave readers various tips on corporate management and the further development of products. In addition, Bill Gates allowed himself some predictions about what the technological world could look like in the future.
Amazingly, 20 years later, Gates was right about almost everything. In his blog, which has since been taken offline, the economics student Markus Kirjonen presented a number of quotes from Gates’ book that have also or partially come true. TECHBOOK has summarized the six most fascinating for you.
1. Social Media
One of Bill Gates’ predictions in 1999 was, “There will be private websites that will allow your friends and family to chat and plan events with each other.” Four years later, the three major projects Myspace, LinkedIn and WordPress were launched.
After they were able to generate hundreds of thousands of users in a very short time, Facebook opened its doors to students in 2004. In the years that followed, the service developed into the largest social media platform of all time with billions of users. Many others followed such as YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat.
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2. Smart phones
“People will carry small devices with them that will allow them to stay in touch with each other and do business electronically from anywhere. They will be able to follow the news, see flights they have booked, get information from the financial markets and do everything else on these devices,” is another of Bill Gates’ predictions.
The smartphone replaced the classic mobile phone at the end of the 2000s. The major difference, in addition to the high-resolution touch screens, was the proprietary operating system, which allowed users to install a large number of applications. Nowadays there is an app for almost every need.
3. Price comparison portals
“Automated price comparison services will be developed that will allow users to view prices from many sites, making it easy to find the cheapest product for any industry,” predicted Bill Gates years ago. In the same year of its prognosis, the company Check24 put one of the first comparison portals online in Germany, at that time still for car insurance.
Today there are numerous portals in this country. Most of these are considered “white labels”, which means that the operator personally receives the price data from the provider. In addition to price comparisons, many portals offer users the opportunity to create profiles for better searches, get other buyers’ opinions and include additional facts such as delivery time and sustainability in the purchase decision.
4. Personalized Advertising
“Devices will have intelligent advertising. They will know your buying preferences and serve ads tailored to your preferences,” predicts Bill Gates. While companies could only advertise on newspaper websites in the late 90’s, in 1997 GoTo.com became the first operator to sell targeted ad space on various websites.
With the increase in computer power and the ability to view and direct traffic, companies have been able to develop many different targeting methods to get specific ads to the right customer. Precise customer profiles are created for optimal addressing via search habits and social media activities.
5. Online job placement
In 1999, Gates wrote, “Similarly, job seekers may be able to find jobs online by specifying their interests, needs and special skills.” LinkedIn was founded in 2003. Today, with 500 million users, it is one of the largest job networks in the world.
Users upload their individual CVs and profiles in order to use them to find suitable jobs. However, you can also be contacted by entrepreneurs. With the exception of China and Russia, the service can be used anywhere in the world.
6. Smart home
“Constant video surveillance of your house will become commonplace and will inform you if someone visits you in your absence,” according to a 1999 prediction, Bill Gates no longer considered distant science fiction. In addition, he said that “personal assistants are being developed that will connect and sync all your devices, whether they are at home or at work, so that data can be exchanged between them.”
According to Gates, it is also conceivable that a user could include their home device when shopping in the city. An example is preparing a meal by compiling a shopping list and preparing all the kitchen appliances for cooking. With these statements, Gates describes the phenomenon of the intelligent home without knowing it.
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Dropcam, for example, offers permanent video surveillance. Google Now and Nest provide the system that allows the devices to network and communicate with each other.