Microsoft Encarta Dies After Long Battle With Wikipedia [NYT Bits Blog]
Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia was living on borrowed time, and yesterday the company announced that it is phasing the product out by the end of June. An accompanying web site will come down at the end of October. Encarta's demise was at the hands a non-profit, volunteer driven competitor - Wikipedia.
Encarta's been around since 1989, starting out as one of the first CD-ROM titles. But Wikipedia's vast volume of information, all compiled by thousands of volunteer contributors proved to be too potent for Encarta to compete with, even though Microsoft attempted to retool Encarta with a web site several years ago. Currently, Wikipedia receives 97 percent of online encyclopedia queries, compared to less than 2 percent for Encarta.
The Internet's information revolution has changed the model for many content producers - record companies, movie studios and newspapers among them. Encarta offers an example of a product that didn't adapt quickly enough to the changing environment, and won't live to see a 20th birthday.
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