Bill Gates made some bold predictions for the internet 20 years ago - here's what he got right

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Bill Gates

Vincent Kessler/Reuters

On Jan. 3, 1996, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates wrote an essay titled "Content is King" in which he made a number of bold predictions for what the internet would look like in the future.

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At the time, only about 1% of the world was online, connection speeds were painfully slow, and there were relatively few websites to choose from. The big modern web staples like YouTube and Facebook didn't exist, and media organizations (like this one) built to serve only digital consumers were unheard of.

Still, the man who helped lead the personal computer revolution could see something bigger on the horizon. In his essay, he predicted everything from the death of print media to the rise in user-generated content sites like Reddit.

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And he was right. Here's a look at what Gates predicted: