Oh, I know full well that narrow columns are easier to read. I'm just not convinced that jumping from the bottom of one column to the top of the next is easier than scrolling and thus reducing vertical and lateral movement of the eyes. To me it seems optimal to reduce eye movement, but in fairness I am just assuming that is the case and drawing my conclusions from that assumption.
Most of the cases where I've wanted to use multi-column layouts were cases where that would let all my content be on one page. The benefits to all your content being visible at once are pretty great, so I'm happy newer CSS specs help.
