Opinion It was a bold claim from the richest and most famous tech founder: bold, precise and wrong. Laughing so. Twenty years ago, Bill Gates promised to rid the world of spam by 2006. How has that worked out for you?
Resolves rogue bot directives
Gates' failure hangs particularly heavy on Google right now. It's not so much the email version; Gmail's Report as Spam option works well, as empty clickbait content clogs its search engine. It's been with us forever: the difference now is that AI spam is spreading out of control. Content spam was two percent of search hits before ChatGPT: it's ten percent now; Google is removing websites manually like never before.
It takes a lot for Google to remove websites from its search results. That means losing ad revenue—the main reason spam sites exist—and the revenue is crack cocaine from publicly traded tech companies. See Microsoft's continued efforts to monetize the Windows desktop. Or Meta's alleged use of maliciously addictive algorithms.
You already know this, you use big tech services and you know the difference between what the companies say publicly and what they actually deliver. You don't matter, the revenue you represent does.
