Prince52 year old legend Prince has claimed that “The internet’s completely over”.

During Prince’s first British newspaper interview for 10 years, he said:

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

He later went on to comment:

“The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

The comments made in the interview with Peter Willis for the Mirror comes on the eve of the debut of Prince’s album 20TEN, and most likely a bid to gain media coverage. And it has worked.

Amongst my daily emails, I noticed that Business Insider are leading with the story “The Doomed Internet” and how maybe Prince is right. They highlight in the article the recent plight of Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and MySpace.

“The Doomed Internet“, come on, really!?! Personally I think they chucked that title out there for page views and comments.

All five of the brands featured in the article are failing because of their own mistakes. Failure to innovate, the loss of that entrepreneurial start-up spirit has caused them to become stale and left behind.

They are all guilty of it, and it’s this level of laziness and greed which will be there down fall, and unlike start-ups where it is all about the user and innovation, these dinosaurs are all about the margins and profit.

But unlike Microsoft who have roots in the real world, and don’t solely rely on internet users for revenue, the others will ultimately be over taken and confined to internet history. Heck they may even try to reinvent themselves again, but there is only so many times you can do that.

Who knows what the future holds for these brands, but there success or failure is not a benchmark for the internet as a whole, and as much as I admirer Prince and his music, I’m not going to take his technology views to hart.