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VIDEOUnwashed Peasants Overthrow Microsoft
How Wikipedia killed Encarta.
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I was reminded of this last weekend when I read that Encarta has reached the end of the line. Microsoft recently announced that sales would soon end, and that Encarta’s website, supported by advertising, would be shut down later this year. I hadn’t thought of Encarta in years, but the news saddened me. My generation will be the last -- and one of the few -- to have used it. Raised on Google (GOOG), kids these days are spoiled; they don’t understand that search wasn’t as easy in the early '90s.
At the time it was released, Encarta was revolutionary. That it survived this long is either a testament to its resilience, or perhaps more likely, Microsoft’s lagging of Google and Wikipedia. Encarta couldn’t keep pace with Wikipedia’s speed and democratic model, and on a larger stage, it couldn’t compete with Google - which has basically cataloged the Internet into a virtual encyclopedia.
In January, Wikipedia got 97% of the visits that web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias, according Hitwise, an Internet ratings service. Encarta was second, with 1.27%. The only thing that's kept Encarta alive in recent years is overseas use in areas where Internet access is lacking.
Microsoft explained its decision on a FAQ page for Encarta. “People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past,” it said. “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.”
Encarta was Bill Gates’s pet project. He conceived it pre-web, in 1985, and envisioned it as a “high-price, high-demand” product with the potential of becoming as profitable to Microsoft as Word or Excel, according to a recent article in the New York Times. Microsoft had to settle for Funk & Wagnalls for its encyclopedia text; to supplement that, it included maps and illustrations, a timeline and an atlas, photographs and hours of sound clips. It made history tangible.
Microsoft released Encarta in 1993, and at $99, it was a sensation. By the next year, a million units had been sold; by the beginning of this decade, it had become the best-selling encyclopedia. A free web version was introduced in 2000. To get the full version online, one had to buy the CD-ROM or DVD. In 2000, at its peak, 50 people -- editors, fact-checkers and indexers -- worked on Encarta, according to the Times.
Microsoft’s diligent work, however, soon gave way to Google and then Wikipedia. People were willing to trade a little accuracy for no cost and continuous updates. With the power of the web -- by which I mean a massive assist from Google -- millions of people have essentially been enlisted as authors and editors - a sweeping, democratizing and occasionally messy revolution in the world of information gathering and dissemination. Wikipedia naturally followed in its wake.
Encyclopedias have returned to their roots - back to basic text, away from Encarta's glossy graphics and design. But Wikipedia offers something the old books could not: Information that's free, and an encyclopedia that's built from the ground up.
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