Some people don't pay very much attention to predictions made by Bill Gates because he has a long history of being wrong with his predictions. Making predictions is not what he is best at.
Several years ago he predicted that spam would be eliminted within 2 years. Several years ago he predicted that Microsoft would surpass Google in search within a year. 11 years ago he predicted that speech technology would replace keyboards within 10 years. There are many more Bill Gates predictions that are just as wrong as these. But to be fair, he has made some predictions that were correct.
Bill Gates made a new prediction a few days ago. He now says that speech will replace keyboards within 5 years. He says there have been big advances in speech recognition technology and by 2013 it will replace keyboards.
Boise, Idaho News, Weather and Traffic - KTRV Fox 12 - Gates cites work to replace keyboards
PC Pro: News: Gates still convinced speech will replace keyboards