Co-founder of Microsoft in January 1996 Bill Gates wrote and published an essay calledContent is King.” Little did he know that it would become one of the most prophetic essays on technology ever published, and that 30 years later we would still be talking about it in the context of the modern internet.
An essay I just read that you can read for yourself Online in PDF formatopens with the line, “Content, like broadcasting, is where I expect most of the real money to come from the internet.”
I vaguely remember what the internet looked like in 1996. I was only eight years old, but the adults around me, especially at school, were already picking up on what he had to offer. It was pretty slow, being almost entirely text-based and with no real centralization efforts.
Content, like broadcasting, is where I expect most of the real money to be made on the Internet.
Bill Gates, “Content is King” (1996)
With the internet unlike anything in 1996, it’s frankly remarkable that Gates’ words remain cutting edge today.
Gates was right in predicting that content would be the key to making money online, with blogs (like Windows Central, which has been around for 20 years), news sites, video and streaming channels, podcasts, newsletters, and more.
Multi-billion dollar industries have been built around the idea that good content will find an audience through search engines and then generate revenue through readers visiting those sites.
Spare me the irony
The implied contract that delivered clicks for content held firm for many years and formed the basis of the Internet’s content-based economy. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be much longer.
The irony is not far from me. Bill Gates one of the key engineers in the technology world as we know it today, for better or for worse. Gates also gave birth to the world he helped create AIit’s only gotten as strong as it has in the past 30 years in part because of the content people have created and posted online.
When I say that AI hurts content creators, I don’t mean in some abstract way. According to some estimatesOrganic traffic to websites in the US has declined further half a billion trips between 2024 and 2025.
When Google’s AI browsing feature rose to the top of the search pages in May 2024, it only took 12 months for the link rate to actual websites to drop. 44% for 31%. This cut did not stop the bleeding.
Given how much the internet’s top content creators rely on traffic and related ad revenue, it’s no wonder so many websites struggle to pay creators.
What options do content publishers have?
While Google was busy directing the vast majority of web traffic, it was also setting traps. A particularly bad trap.
Publishers should publish and ideally be seen by Google for the best chance of having a “hit” piece of content. Refusing to allow your content to be seen by Google’s AI crawlers means opting out of Google entirely, which is an even worse fate. This is a “pick your poison” type of situation.
So far, content licensing agreements don’t really work either. Click-through rates are still on the decline, and publishers are still trying to figure out how to escape Google’s trap.
This ultimately begs the question: “What will Google steal if it fires all the publishers and content creators?“
The dark twist of the AI content era
The sentence immediately following the opening line of Gates’ ’96 essay is almost painful and ripe for discussion.
The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including television production, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.
Bill Gates, “Content is King” (1996)
It’s no secret that broadcasters and studios have gotten incredibly rich from the television revolution, and we’re seeing the same thing happen again.
The long-term winners are the AI firms that deliver the data content creators produce and publishers access to the web. But this time, the long-term winners win by stealing content they didn’t create, which is created by writers who are already unemployed or soon to be unemployed.
Thirty years ago, Gates envisioned an all-encompassing internet where ordinary people could publish content and contribute to a vibrant information economy. At least he got some of that right.
The Internet’s information economy is booming, but the actual people who provide the content may not be part of the cycle any time soon.
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