Not Bill Gates — he wrote the oppositeNo verified speakerCredited to Bill Gates (b. 1955), Microsoft co-founder
?Attribution status: Disputed — unsourced, absent from every sourced record, and contradicted by Gates’s own memo from the same year.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
No press conference, interview, speech or document has ever been produced for this sentence, and it appears in none of Wikiquote ↗’s sourced sections for Gates. The contemporaneous record points the other way: in an internal Microsoft memo titled “The Internet Tidal Wave,” Gates wrote “Now I assign the Internet the highest level of importance.”
“The internet is just a passing fad” Unverified. "The internet is just a passing fad" has never been traced to Bill Gates or to anyone else — no press conference, interview or document has been produced, and it appears in none of Wikiquote’s sourced sections. In his internal memo "The Internet Tidal Wave" of May 26, 1995, Gates wrote the opposite: "Now I assign the Internet the highest level of importance." — Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Bill Gates. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the themes of change, doubt and knowledge. Theme: "The internet is just a passing fad". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The internet is just a passing fad". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
What Gates actually wrote about the internet
Alleged source
None — no press conference, interview or document has ever been produced
What he did write
The Internet Tidal Wave, internal Microsoft memo
Dated
26 May 1995 — later entered as a Justice Department trial exhibit in United States v. Microsoft
Status
Unverified as a quotation, and contradicted by the memo
Now I assign the Internet the highest level of importance.
His own words, 1995
From Gates’s “The Internet Tidal Wave” memo, as reproduced by the National Constitution Center ↗. The memo is dated 26 May 1995 and was later entered as a U.S. Department of Justice trial exhibit in the antitrust case against Microsoft, per Wikipedia’s history of Microsoft ↗.
26 May 1995 — Gates circulates an internal memo to Microsoft’s executive staff titled “The Internet Tidal Wave,” describing Netscape as a “new competitor ‘born’ on the Internet”; it later became a Justice Department trial exhibit (Wikipedia ↗).
In that memo — “Now I assign the Internet the highest level of importance,” as reproduced by the National Constitution Center ↗.
28 October 2004 — a Wikiquote contributor asks whether Gates called the internet “just a passing fad” at a 1995 press conference and reports finding no source. Two decades later the line still appears in none of Wikiquote’s sourced sections (Wikiquote talk page ↗).
What he did get wrong — Wikiquote files under “Attributed” — not “Quotes” — a remark that Gates saw “little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years,” placed at COMDEX in November 1994 and sourced only to a 2009 book, not to a transcript (Wikiquote ↗).
No rights status can be asserted for a sentence with no identified author and no source. The memo quoted above is a different matter: it is a 1995 Microsoft internal document, long after the 1931 public-domain cutoff, and remains the company’s property. It is reproduced here only as the short excerpt needed to document what Gates actually wrote.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The quote that exists to make a point
This one is not a misremembered source or a drifted wording. There is no source at all — no venue, no date, no transcript, no reporter. It circulates because it is useful: a tidy example of an expert missing the obvious.
✕
The universal creditBill Gates No source
Asked on Wikiquote’s talk page ↗ in 2004 whether Gates said it at a 1995 press conference, the questioner reported finding no source. None has surfaced since, and the line appears in none of Wikiquote ↗’s sourced sections.
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What the record shows insteadGates, in May 1995 Context
The memo that survives from that year says “Now I assign the Internet the highest level of importance” (National Constitution Center ↗) — the same year the fad remark is usually placed in.
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The nearest real criticismThe COMDEX 1994 remark Attributed, not the source
Wikiquote lists under “Attributed” a line about seeing “little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years,” placed at COMDEX in November 1994 — but its only cited source is a 2009 book, not a transcript (Wikiquote ↗). Even the defensible version of the charge is thinly sourced.
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Why it sounds plausibleMicrosoft’s real slowness Context
Gates told an audience in 1998 that the internet had been “a fifth or sixth priority” at Microsoft before the company understood how fast it was moving (Wikiquote ↗). Being late is documented; dismissing it as a fad is not.
✓The honest verdict is not “he said it and was wrong” but “nobody can show he said it.” The best contemporaneous document from the year in question has Gates assigning the Internet the highest level of importance (National Constitution Center ↗).
Context
Why a quote nobody can source refuses to die
Every field keeps a story about the expert who failed to see it coming, and the technology industry keeps this one. It is short, it names the richest man in software, and it flatters everybody who did see it coming. Those are the conditions under which a sentence stops needing a source.
It also has the shape of a genuine criticism, which is what makes it durable. Microsoft really was late to the Web, and the argument about how late is a real one. But the sentence attached to that argument was never said by the person it is pinned on, and the document that survives from the year in question says something close to the reverse.
Being late is documented. Dismissing it as a fad is not.
What the 1995 memo actually did
On 26 May 1995 Gates sent Microsoft’s executive staff a memo headed “The Internet Tidal Wave.” It named Netscape as a “new competitor ‘born’ on the Internet” and stated that he was assigning the Internet the highest level of importance from then on. The memo later became a Justice Department trial exhibit in the antitrust case against Microsoft, which is why an internal document is public at all (Wikipedia ↗, National Constitution Center ↗).
The memo is not a defence of Gates’s foresight — a company does not need a memo announcing a change of priorities if the priorities were already right, and its own text describes Microsoft as having underestimated the Internet. It is simply evidence about what he said, which is the only question this page is asking.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 1955 · Microsoft co-founder, software developer and philanthropist
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and ran it through the period this quotation is supposedly set in. The interesting part is that a real criticism exists and this line is not it: Microsoft genuinely was slow to the Web, and Gates said so himself in 1998 — the internet had been “a fifth or sixth priority” until the company realised it was moving faster than its strategy assumed. That is a long way from calling it a fad, and it is on the record, which the famous sentence has never been.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available documentation
No source has ever been documented for this quotation. For the contemporaneous record that contradicts it, see Bill Gates, “The Internet Tidal Wave,” internal Microsoft memorandum, 26 May 1995, later a U.S. Department of Justice trial exhibit in United States v. Microsoft; reproduced by the National Constitution Center. Attribution to Gates unverified.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The internet is just a passing fad’?” Last verified 13 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-internet-is-just-a-passing-fad/