Encarta: Multimedia digital encyclopedia produced by Microsoft (1993–2009). Electronic reference tools cover everything under the sun. Explore Encyclopedia Britannica, Encarta and more in this LibrarySpot.com feature. Microsoft decided to shut down its Encarta encyclopedia, conceding defeat in its battle with the free, collaborative Wikipedia project. Microsoft to its dying Encarta encyclopedia, acknowledging what everyone else realized long ago: it just couldn’t compete with, a free, collaborative project that has become the leading encyclopedia on the Web. In January, Wikipedia got 97 percent of the visits that Web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias, according to the Internet ratings service Hitwise. Encarta was second, with 1.27 percent. Unlike Wikipedia, where volunteer editors quickly update popular entries, Encarta can be embarrassingly outdated. The, for example, identifies him as vice president-elect and a U.S. The Encarta software will be removed from stores by June, Microsoft said, and the affiliated worldwide Web sites will be closed by the end of October. (The Japanese site will continue until the end of December.) Without mentioning Wikipedia directly, Microsoft explained its decision on a for Encarta. “The category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed,” it said. “People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business.” On that same page, the company asked itself if other Microsoft educational software would be discontinued as well. Its answer: “We’re not making any other announcements at this time.” The bulk of the Microsoft FAQ page explains how subscribers to the Encarta service could get a refund on what they had paid. In the mid- to late 1980s, when Encarta began as a pet project of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, it had the potential to be as unsettling to the traditional encyclopedia business as Wikipedia is today. After being rebuffed by as a partner in making material available to personal computer users as a CD-ROM, Microsoft in 1989 went to Funk & Wagnalls and decided to make “a virtue of necessity,” according to by Professor Shane Greenstein and Michelle Devereux for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “Microsoft could not build its encyclopedia on the highest-quality content,” they wrote.
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