The Wikipedia entry for Microsoft’s Encarta:

Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 until 2009. As of 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium consisted of more than 62,000 articles,[1] numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactivities, timelines, maps and atlas, and homework tools, and was available on the World Wide Web by yearly subscription or by purchase on DVD-ROM or multiple CD-ROMs. Many articles could also be viewed online free of charge, a service supported by advertisements.[2]

Microsoft publishes similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions may contain contents licensed from available national sources and may contain more or less content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch version has content from the Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia.
In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing the Encarta disc and online versions.[3]

Much like newspapers’ classified advertising fell victim to craigslist, Encarta has fallen victim to wikipedia. For some reason, this makes me a little sad.

Also, Encarta’s entry for wikipedia is sort of worthless.

Via Forbes.com

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

8 replies on “This Week in Information”

  1. Encarta’s entry for everything was kind of worthless. I remember when it first came out, and they were all “this is the future of information access!” (this was before MS was on the internet), and “can paper encylopedias like Brittanica survive in the wake of this digital assault?” but when I went to look at the thing (remember the free disks?) the articles were PATHETIC, like something you’d see in the third grade.

    They’re better than that now, but not by much. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

  2. I, too, am sad for the loss of an online encyclopedia that couldn’t be edited by just anybody with an axe to grind and an afternoon on their hands. Then again, I really never used Encarta because it cost money.

  3. I’ll miss the original disc form for the multimedia alone. When it first came out it was pretty damned cool to click a link and go to another article entirely or watch a movie or muck about with the globe.

  4. Encarta was the last of a whole slew of multimedia projects that MS created just before they realized the web was important. I worked on a few of them. Cinemania was the best; it combined all of Pauline Kael’s, Roger Ebert’s, and Leonard Maltin’s reviews with biographies and articles, as well as pictures and clips. MS actually created some of the content themselves. They tried to keep it alive with downloadable updates, but it couldn’t match the completeness of information that sites like IMDB began to offer.

  6. What ever happened to World Book? My parents still have the 1991 edition on the shelf… I was one of those kids that like to read it a lot.

  7. Encarta was on the decline way before Wikipedia. The Microsoft group wasted time on ridiculous pet projects instead of putting their energy into keeping Encarta relevant.

  8. That’s kind of sad. When we first upgraded our 386 in… oh, 1993 with a CD-ROM and sound card,Encarta was the first exposure I’d ever had to multimedia. I was entranced.

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