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Big Mac · May 12, 2006, 09:35 PM

I was watching The Big Idea because of the lead in from Mad Money and decided not to turn off an interview with Bill Gates. I found rather interesting Gates' vision of the future of the search engine. He speaks of a search "platform" in which some person - not necessarily the individual user - will make decisions about which sources to trust for various categories of content. He said something along the lines of, "for this topic we'll trust the New York Times, and for this subject we'll trust the Wall Street Journal. . ." He claims we'll soon look back on search engines of today as something of a joke.

Bill says he does not enjoy the fact that we now are forced to search around for information instead of simply finding the information we want. Now I have no problem with an effort to categorize the Internet, and such an endeavor is not anything new. Yet, as we've come to expect from Gates, his answer to Google seems to be a system of rigid, top-down control, in which M$ would be the sole information arbiter and broker. For the sake of liberty, I think we must oppose M$'s initiatives in the search arena vigorously. And we must not underestimate M$ in that market - MSN Search is merely a prelude to the coming search war.

Stogieman · May 12, 2006, 10:03 PM

Yeah, I saw that interview too. I like the part when Donny asked him what was on his iPod. Here's his lame ass response. "I don't own an iPod. I think a phone is a nice portable device to have ones music on. And I think some other people may do that in the future too. We'll see."

olePigeon · May 12, 2006, 11:03 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

He claims we'll soon look back on search engines of today as something of a joke.

Because by then the only "trusted" news source will be MSNBC, and it'll tell us how great Microsoft is and how they're making the world a better place.

JoshuaZ · May 13, 2006, 05:07 AM

We all know Gates has a room filled with iPods, which from time to time, he smashes into small bits with hammers and axes. Its his stress relief.

Cadaver · May 13, 2006, 09:32 AM

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

We all know Gates has a room filled with iPods, which from time to time, he smashes into small bits with hammers and axes. Its his stress relief.

Salty · May 13, 2006, 01:51 PM

That's lame! I would rather have the whole internet decide that content is good rather than the Wall Street Journal!

greenamp · May 13, 2006, 02:26 PM

Yeah I watched that interview as well. Bill Gates seems really out of touch with todays technological needs and goals. His "vision" of the future seems rooted in ideas he had in the 1990s.

ink · May 13, 2006, 02:53 PM

Originally Posted by Salty

That's lame! I would rather have the whole internet decide that content is good rather than the Wall Street Journal!

Which would boil down to one editor's opinion on deserving content. This isn't the first time that Bill didn't "get it".

Salty · May 13, 2006, 03:03 PM

The world would be so much better off if Microsoft was like... just handed to some other people to run

.

CharlesS · May 13, 2006, 03:23 PM

Is there a transcript of this interview available anywhere? I can't seem to find one...

DigitalEl · May 13, 2006, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by Stogieman

I think a phone is a nice portable device to have ones music on. And I think some other people may do that in the future too. We'll see."

I'm no Bill Gates fan (and not a Bill Gates hater either), but I see absolutely nothing wrong with the above quote. I know many dismiss convergence and will hold onto their individual devices 'til they're pried from their cold, dead hands... But I welcome our convergence overlords.

If there was an iTunes-compatible phone with a usable feature-set in an acceptable form factor, I'd be all over it. The ROKR and SLVR are not the answer, but someday there will be one and I'll be first in line!

CharlesS · May 13, 2006, 05:40 PM

For something equivalent to the Shuffle or nano, that could maybe work, but I don't see a company putting a 60 GB hard drive into a cell phone.

DigitalEl · May 13, 2006, 05:52 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

I don't see a company putting a 60 GB hard drive into a cell phone.

The future of music devices is not in hard drives. A 60 GB flash drive could fit in just about any form factor. That day is coming.

CharlesS · May 13, 2006, 11:18 PM

Originally Posted by DigitalEl

[/b]The future of music devices is not in hard drives. A 60 GB flash drive could fit in just about any form factor. That day is coming.

I think it will be a long time before a 60 GB becomes anything even close to affordable, and by that time the portable hard drives that the iPod uses will be at 600 GB...

ink · May 13, 2006, 11:47 PM

Originally Posted by DigitalEl

[/b]The future of music devices is not in hard drives. A 60 GB flash drive could fit in just about any form factor. That day is coming.

Screw that; the future of the cell phone is the network. Take you SIM card out of one phone, put it in another -> all tunes are now on the new phone.

Not to mention all your documents.

All your pictures.

All your videos.

Bluetooth lets you use nearby screens/keyboards/printers.

Convergence; with near-perfect voice recognition. I'll be shocked if Apple doesn't have a major hand in bringing my dream true. I know that Google is already headed down that path.

I can't wait.

CharlesS · May 14, 2006, 01:31 AM

^ The cell phone companies would be sure to charge you a pretty penny for that one...

Ulrich Kinbote · May 14, 2006, 03:44 AM

Originally Posted by Stogieman

Yeah, I saw that interview too. I like the part when Donny asked him what was on his iPod. Here's his lame ass response. "I don't own an iPod. I think a phone is a nice portable device to have ones music on. And I think some other people may do that in the future too. We'll see."

That is lame.

As in judo, the best way to handle a dig like this would have been to go along with it.

Gates could have said something like, "Which one? I have four." That would have been less lame.

MaxPower2k3 · May 14, 2006, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

^ The cell phone companies would be sure to charge you a pretty penny for that one...

current SIM cards already let you take your account info + address book from phone to phone. They'd just need to make higher capacity SIM cards.

But with a lot of new phones supporting removable memory like TransFlash, it's not that hard to just swap both the SIM and the memory card to a new phone and keep all of your content in tact.

CharlesS · May 14, 2006, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by MaxPower2k3

current SIM cards already let you take your account info + address book from phone to phone. They'd just need to make higher capacity SIM cards.

That'd be a pretty big jump from 64K to 60 GB or whatever...

But with a lot of new phones supporting removable memory like TransFlash, it's not that hard to just swap both the SIM and the memory card to a new phone and keep all of your content in tact.

Yeah, but it seemed like the poster I quoted was talking about storing everything on the network, on the cell company's servers. "Screw that; the future of the cell phone is the network."

amsalpemkcus · May 14, 2006, 12:52 PM

Sounds like he is talking about artificial stupidity.

Kerrigan · May 14, 2006, 01:55 PM

Frankly, I agree with Gates's premise. With, say, the NYT or WSJ, you have a high standard of scholarly editorializing and fact-checking. With 99% of the internet, your information comes from Joe Bagadonnuts, and you're rather likely to get an incomplete perspective on any given subject.

Just look at some of the most frequently visited sources of information on the 'net. Drudge Report feeds you a steady diet of alarmist headlines designed to reinforce the prejudices of conservatives.

Wikipedia gives you shallow coverage, barely skimming the surface of any given subject, and frequently compensates for its lack of thoroughness by delving into "criticism of" or "conspiracy theories about" the subject at hand.

Motleyfool, and other high-traffic financial forums, promote wild speculation about obscure stocks.

Basically my point is that the internet spreads ignorance to the extent that it allows people to reinforce their fringe perspectives with flawed information. A different approach to the search engine may change this, we'll see.

Chuckit · May 14, 2006, 02:30 PM

Several perspectives are usually better than one. And also, you can already search just one source on Google if you only want one source. As a general search technology, I don't think guessing based on some predetermined criteria what the "correct" source should be will work very well.

As an obvious example of why predicting what users will mean could be a problem: If I'm searching for "bush," should I get the "correct" source for the President, the plant, hairdressing or porn sites? (Or any number of other things, many of which the designers of the search would not be aware of.)

ink · May 14, 2006, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Yeah, but it seemed like the poster I quoted was talking about storing everything on the network, on the cell company's servers. "Screw that; the future of the cell phone is the network."

Yep.

Not necesarilly on the phone companies' servers, per-se, but on the network. It'd be silly to put your life in a device that can be run over by a car at any moment (as my wife's cell phone just did).

Think iDisk, only super-charged and ubiquitous.

I write distributed-media software for a living. The technology is all there, it just requires a company with the cajones to bring it to life.

funkboy · May 14, 2006, 07:22 PM

Originally Posted by ink

I write distributed-media software for a living. The technology is all there, it just requires a company with the cajones to bring it to life.

Microsoft wants to do it, but has certainly not made it happen yet. Apple is way out in front in that way - they have a network disk you can use today. Even though it doesn't work perfectly, it's better than nothing. Apple will continue to improve it...

Will Apple do it??

Also...
the EFF should be very worried about this vision Bill Gates has for the future of the internet. That is information control... yikes.

turtle777 · May 14, 2006, 10:03 PM

Originally Posted by greenamp

Yeah I watched that interview as well. Bill Gates seems really out of touch with todays technological needs and goals. His "vision" of the future seems rooted in ideas he had in the 1990s.

True for M$ as a hole.

-t