Microsoft Encarta filed under H for History
By John Lister
Microsoft has announced it is to drop its Encarta encylopaedia. The move has been seen as inevitable since the rise of user-generated content such as Wikipedia.
The firm will stop selling Encarta products, mainly CD-ROMs and DVDs, by the end of June. The associated Web sites will shut down later in the year. Those who subscribe to the premium service will continue to have access until its closure, but will be refunded for any part of their subscription period after April.
In its early years, Encarta was an impressive product. It took the content of existing encyclopedias and added multimedia content such as audio clips, pictures and videos. And even if showing off these clips to elderly relatives at Christmas was about the extent of most people’s use of the products, it was a useful tool in maintaining the facade that you had bought a PC to “help the kids with their homework”. The contents also impressed because they were update more regularly than printed reference books.
But while Encarta used to fill a gap in the market, in 2009 it had fallen into a gap between markets. For people who want authoritative information from a trusted source, Encarta is little competition to printed encyclopedias.
For people who are more interested in information about a wide range of subjects that is updated regularly, either Wikipedia itself or the internet generally is far more useful than Encarta, if only as a signpost to more reliable sources. To put things into context, Encarta’s paid edition currently has around 62,000 entries, compared with nearly three million on Wikipedia.
According to figures quoted by the New York Times, Wikipedia has a 97 percent share on online queries to encyclopedias, with Encarta at just 1.27 percent.
The closure does raise the question of what happens to the huge picture library Microsoft has built up for Encarta. One Wikipedia administrator has already asked Microsoft to release the content for public use.
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March 31st, 2009
It’s spelled encyclopedia
March 31st, 2009
Only in American English. Encyclopaedia is the correct English spelling.
April 1st, 2009
@Gall,
“It’s spelled encyclopedia”
You probably can’t pronounce words like “the”, “research” or “authorities”, don’t know the difference between a noun and a verb, can’t distinguish between singular and plural, fail to differentiate between past and present tense, don’t know what “momentarily” means, think that “careering” and “careening” are interchangeable, have no idea what “begs the question” really means, and so on ad nauseam.
It may be American, but it certainly isn’t English.
April 1st, 2009
Hugh, you forgot a couple of the worst examples of US mispronunciation, which unfortunately have resulted in many of my fellow Australians deserting the Queen’s English:
“harrassment”; the correct pronunciation should have the emphasis on the first syllable, not the second.
“lieutenant”; should sound like “lef-ten-ant”
“clerk”; should sound like “clark”
These really get up my nose, but I’m sure I could think of more if I put my mind to it….