In the 90’s, Bill Gates I was thinking of a television on which you could surf the Internet. Finally, his vision could not be cemented, but after a few years it became what we all know today as Smart TV.
The then president of Microsoft promoted the purchase of WebTV Networks, by 1997 the main provider of television Internet access in the United States.
The history of this company is curious. Three young men from California, Steve Perlman, Bruce Leak and Phil Goldman, created it in 1995, thanks to an investment from Paul Allen, Gates’ partner at Microsoft. The multinational paid 425 million dollars for its project.
This was WebTV, the company acquired by Bill Gates’ Microsoft
How did WebTV work? according to account The country In a note from the time, they were transformers connected on one side to the television, and on the other to a telephone line. Thus, the user could view Internet pages on television.
Each transformer, which is a box, consists of a 33.6 baud per second modem and a chip that converts the telephone signal into images for the screen. It also brought a keyboard and a control. Your total cost: 350 dollars, plus a monthly fee of $19.95.
But Bill Gates’ idea went beyond just surfing the Internet on television. It was also to control various household items, including telephone and music systems.
Your name: Windows CE. Eventually, WebTV was renamed MSN TV.
He explained it in a statement at the time, Shared by xataka.
“Windows CE, a compatible subset of our Windows family, makes it much easier for consumer electronics manufacturers to do things like:
- A personalized guide of tv shows,
- Applications that allow view web pages and check email easy on tv
- control the home heating and lighting systems,
- or even connect a digital camera and post or send photos by email via the Internet.
Causes of project failure
But, why did the project fail? Although it is what we know today as a Smart TV, which was enormously successful in the future, at the time it did not have several key elements.
The use of Internet via Wi-Fi it was not fully developed; the televisions did not have the right technology and there was no huge list of service providers.
Much less think about the explosion that today means el streaming, that gives real economic value to the Internet on television.
Already in 2007, a decade after acquiring WebTV, Bill Gates explained: “I’m amazed at how people don’t see that, in five years, they will laugh at the television we have now.”
“Since television is beginning to be distributed over the Internet, and some large telephone companies are building the infrastructure for it, We are going to have that experience all together.”
