It may not be 100% reliable, but for the vast number of Internet surfers, user-updated online encyclopedia Wikipedia is just fine. It's so fine that Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) has decided to
let its Encarta encyclopedia join the ranks of door-to-door Encyclopedia Britannica salesmen this year, although Microsoft is still hanging on to some coveted images through its Corbis subsidiary that Wikipedia wants.
As described in a Bits blog, the Wiki-dominance is so far-reaching that it got 97% of the visits that Web surfers in the U.S. made to online encyclopedias, while Encarta was second with 1.27%. Users of the site can count on other emphatic updaters to make popular entries current, while Encarta can be a bit outdated. The Bits blog is worth a read as it gets into the strategy behind creating Encarta in the '80s and why -- besides the obvious -- it ended up where it did.
As if the defeat wasn't enough, a recently updated Wikipedia entry on Encarta offered these nuggets: Microsoft announced in March 2009 that they will cease to sell Microsoft Student and all editions of Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009, citing changes in the way people seek information and in the traditional encyclopedia and reference material market as the key reasons behind the termination.
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Baz HiralalGo to the story
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