Microsoft Encarta Dies After Long Battle With Wikipedia

By Noam Cohen

Microsoft delivered the coup de grâce Monday to its dying Encarta encyclopedia, acknowledging what everyone else realized long ago: it just couldn’t compete with Wikipedia, 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 Unlike Wikipedia, where volunteer editors quickly update popular entries, Encarta can be embarrassingly outdated.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 entry for Joseph R. Biden Jr., for example, identifies him as vice president-elect and a U.S. senator.

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 FAQ page 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 Encyclopedia Britannica 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 2006 case history 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. “Instead, it invested in choice graphics and sound to bring value to its product.”

In the pre-Internet and early Internet era, Encarta was an example of Microsoft trying to enhance the experience of PC users –- a way of selling the computer experience to an unfamiliar public.

“You could very much argue that Encarta, was a me-too product, a way to add some more value to the Microsoft suite” of software that came with Windows, said Andrew Lih, author of “The Wikipedia Revolution,” a new history of Wikipedia. “Microsoft never added the resources or brainpower to be anything more than that.” (I wrote about Mr. Lih’s book and the significance of Wikipedia in Sunday’s Times.)

As the amount of information available online grew exponentially, it became quaint to purchase DVDs of factual material. While a free, text-oriented project like Wikipedia could not compete with the graphics and design of Encarta, that wasn’t important to consumers.

Still, Mr. Lih said something would be lost in the shuttering of Encarta. “Bill Gates bought Corbis, and Encarta had access to all these images that Wikipedia could never get,” he said. “Right now, that is a big weakness of Wikipedia -– the material has to be free.”

Mathias Schindler, one of the administrators of German Wikipedia, said he had already sent an e-mail to Microsoft asking the company to release the material from Encarta that it doesn’t plan to use anymore.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Detlev CM March 31, 2009 · 3:34 am

The only problem is that Wikipedia can’t be relied on for factual accuracy.
Encarta could be used for, for example A-Level work (UK) – as content was checke at least once.

Wikipedia can include nonsense too…

I will not use Wikipedia for any university work – and this means that I have now lost a potential source of information….

Tom Corddry March 31, 2009 · 3:47 am

I ran the team that created Encarta, so I’m standing up to say a few awkward words at its graveside memorial service. Encarta, may it rest in peace, deserves to be remembered more for its quality than you suggest. Your sources repeat several notions that were never true of Encarta-first, that the content from Funk and Wagnall’s was “low quality” compared to Britannica, and second that the value added by Microsoft was primarily “graphics and sound.” The text from Funk and Wagnall’s was far superior to Britannica’s as a starting point for a digital encyclopedia, because it was much more nearly “structured data,” meaning that the architecture of the text was very consistent from one article to the next. This allowed us to add a lot of “contextual” value–to compute the relatedness of every article to every other article, and build what was at the time a uniquely useful set of links and navigational tools across the entire content. Britannica, by contrast, was a bloated mishmash, a consequence of its long tradition of having articles written by many different celebrity authors. (I ghost-wrote one myself, in fact). By the standards of the print encyclopedia world, Microsoft invested heavily in expanding and updating the content of Encarta right from the beginning. We consciously invested in the contextual value just described, in expanding the core content, in creating the world’s first truly global encyclopedia, and in an efficient update cycle. We had enough “multimedia” in the original product to keep the reviewers happy, but focused on the overall usefulness of the whole product much more than on the relative handful of video clips, etc. I’d argue that within its first five years, Encarta became the best encyclopedia in history: it had tremendously consistent quality and usefulness across a very broad range of topics, and added a great deal of value by the relationships it illuminated between topics. All of that has been rendered a bit quaint now, but in it’s day it was an accomplishment worthy of a graveside toast. Encarta had more than “the potential” to unsettle the print encyclopedia business–it pretty much destroyed it. Print encyclopedias were dead, thanks to Encarta, before Wikipedia existed. We expected from the beginning that Encarta would eventually be superceded by online information-seeking. As brilliant as Wikipedia is, I don’t think that Wikipedia by itself killed Encarta. I think the Web as a whole made Encarta obsolete. I hope treasured old copies of Encarta will live on for a while in remote corners of the world, where people have scattered access to computers but little or no connection to the Web–school libraries in Africa, for example. In those places, even out-of-date copies of African Encarta, the only Encyclopedia of Africa ever published, will live on, and Joe Biden will forever be newly-elected. I’ll drink to that.

HSM-STL March 31, 2009 · 7:09 am

Goodbye Encarta! You have done your job and you can rest in peace!

Welcome Wiki..up to the minute encyclopedia!!

pointpetre March 31, 2009 · 7:17 am

I think it would be great if Microsoft releases that material. Wikipedia is great without it, but it would be a fine addition.

Joshua March 31, 2009 · 7:17 am

It’s a strange fact that no matter how popular its products are, Microsoft eventually kills them. Consider Visual Basic. Consider FrontPage. Consider Windows XP.

The circumstances may vary from product to product, but you might naively expect that the dominant company in personal computer software would be rock stable! NOT!

Craig Smilovitz March 31, 2009 · 7:43 am

It’s interesting that Microsoft’s Corbis images and fancy graphics design couldn’t beat Wikipedia’s timeliness and comprehensiveness.

Often the mid 1990’s transition of the internet to the worldwide web from the ftp and telnet era is seen as the victory of image over text. But here we have a case of good text beating mediocre graphics.

Maybe graphic content is overrated and it’s time to realize that the most valuable contribution of the http: protocol was better navigation rather than fancy graphics.

CL March 31, 2009 · 7:44 am

Microsoft could show a commitment to an open Interweb by licensing (at no charge) all its proprietary Encarta content to Wikipedia. It would also deal a blow to Google’s efforts on Knol.

I somehow doubt it would get past Redmond Legal though…

albi March 31, 2009 · 7:56 am

YES Die >soft die…..

NH Bob March 31, 2009 · 8:01 am

Sorta like stem cells, eh? Not gonna use them (Encarta pictures, graphs, extra bits), but probably gonna throw them away.rather than use them for a viable purpose. This should test what good will MS has left!

Fernando Lima March 31, 2009 · 8:29 am

A research says Wikipedia is more reliable than commercial paid-for encyclopedias. Just don’t remember where I’ve read it.

Emily March 31, 2009 · 8:29 am

to Detlev CM:

I am shocked you would use any encyclopedia for university level work. Stick to your primary sources.

MitchP March 31, 2009 · 9:09 am

I didn’t even know Encarta was around (I owned Encarta 95 on CD-ROM). Did Microsoft even try to promote it? They do have a slightly higher operating budget than Wiki right?

Why not incorporate Encarta into a unique interface with Vista? Or Xbox?

Does anybody at Microsoft talk to each other?

Jon H. March 31, 2009 · 9:18 am

Even in the pre-Wikipedia days of the mid- to late-90s, as I was working my way though high school, I saw little purpose to Encarta (except for maybe self-education) and sought out other sources in–shock–print!

Call me diligent.

Jo March 31, 2009 · 10:47 am

R.I.P. Encarta, you served me well througout my school years. Farewell my friend.

Randonneur March 31, 2009 · 10:53 am

N° 2: “I’d argue that within its first five years, Encarta became the best encyclopedia in history.”

That would be a hard argument to win. Of course, it depends upon what standards you judge by. Mr. Corddry may have in mind standards that favor the Encarta project, but others would have other ideas. Depth and scope of coverage are more important, in my opinion, than “a uniquely useful set of links and navigational tools across the entire content”.

This article reminded me that I bought the Encarta DVD about 5 years ago and installed it on a computer that I had just purchased. I recently bought a new computer, and it never occurred to me to install Encarta on that one. I use Wikipedia regularly (thanks, in part, to Wikipedia entries topping the lists of so many Google hits). I cannot remember when I last opened Encarta. And as for treasuring old copies of encyclopedias, I do that with my 11th edition Encylopedia Britannica — not my 2004 edition of Encarta.

Now if only Microsoft had paid me the $25 rebate upon my purchase, as they had promised to do, I might feel differently…

albi March 31, 2009 · 11:05 am

Ok OK now is time to Vista to die too??

Ken B March 31, 2009 · 11:42 am

The comment from Tom Corddry, of the Encarta team, is well worth reading. But I can’t help pointing out that his post is a single unbroken paragraph, or “bloated mishmash.” :)

Encarta was doomed by Microsoft’s poor marketing and ongoing lack of vision of how to leverage the web. It’s amazing that after all this time and with all their resources, Microsoft still has such a hard time marketing products to consumers and showing imagination. The look and feel of the Encarta website is also unimpressive; even with all doubts about Wikipedia’s reliability, it still has a better “vibe.” This directly reflects Microsoft’s culture.

One way Wikipedia clearly beats the others is breadth: it includes far more obscure subjects and many of these articles are well written and very useful. For example, I wanted information about the old 6502 microprocessor and there’s a wealth of material, and I’m sure some of it would be deemed too obscure or frivolous to include in any other “serious” reference (e.g., under “popular culture” we learn that the 6502 powered Bender, the robot in the “Futurama” animated TV comedy). This kind of info can also be found on enthusiast websites, but it makes far more sense to gather such articles on Wikipedia.

Tom Corddry March 31, 2009 · 12:17 pm

In response to Randonneur, post 15, a bit of explanation: Print encyclopedia editorial groups, even in their heyday, were actually quite small, and much of their work from year to year was devoted to removing content in order to make room for other content. The size of the multi-volume sets was fixed, so every word added had to be offset by a word subtracted. Since it was also expensive to touch more pages than necessary when making changes (a printing fact of life), the editors ingeniously found ways to remove content as close as possible to where they were adding content. Need a big new article on Bosnia? Better find stuff to cut from the articles about Bosporus or Boss Tweed. The senior editors at these publications estimated that at least half of the total editorial effort was devoted to this sort of non-value-adding work. At Encarta, by contrast, nearly all the editorial work added value–writing new articles, updating, expanding and improving existing articles, and, of course, adding the sorts of elements that computers could support that were truly valuable: the sound of a bassoon, the way gravity works in orbital models, and so forth. At its peak, the Encarta editorial staff was roughly four times the size of any of its print competitors, included many of the best people from those competitors, and was devoting much more effort to actual new and better content. Then there’s the whole international aspect… all print encyclopedias were highly nation-specific. Encarta was always global. In practice, this meant a core of universal content with “extensions” in each national area, and global licensing of content, which further increased the value created by the editorial staff. This model also works brilliantly for Wikipedia. By exploiting its advantages, The Encarta team, over a period of a decade (late 80s to late 90s), created a body of content that offered greater scope AND depth than its print competitors, then tossed in the advantages of navigation, multimedia, integrated updates, and low price. As a result, more copies of Encarta were sold, by far, in its 16-year run than were sold of all print encyclopedias combined in their several-century run. It reached many more school children world wide than any encylopedia had ever done before it. Wikipedia has since expanded greatly on that reach, and is a far superior resource, as long as you recognize the inherent uncertainty about accuracy–but even that is a useful lesson for life: there’s no such thing as ultimate authority. My reference to “treasured copies” doesn’t expect too much sentiment in the first world, just continuing usefulness in the third world, where computers are spreading faster than the Internet, and even an outdated copy of Encarta may be the best source of accurate information in the whole village.

Hash March 31, 2009 · 12:23 pm

Encarta had its own time. its less about competing with Wikipedia.. and more of an era gone. Encarta came to people when they were still turning on pages in Webster’s or Kingfisher’s bulky encyclopedias. a CD full of managed information and multimedia was a whole new world. So much information came on the screens suddenly.
Although updates were delayed by a year, it was still better than years old books in shelves.
So, now is the time of Wiki and am sure it has a long way to go.

Patrick March 31, 2009 · 1:52 pm

Thanks Tom Corddry, I was a graphic design intern on version 1.0 and spent many months working on it in 1992. It was very exciting to be a part of something historically significant like that.

I remember spending many hours with my Mac hooked up to a capture card, capturing video frames and saving each as a seperate photoshop file and constructing movie clips. All of it before digital movie editing software was available. What used to take me a full day to do can now be done in 5 minutes with final cut pro. I also spent many months manually coloring in maps and illustrations. It was slow work, but the end product was absolutely amazing and robust. People now can’t possibly realize what a huge undertaking this project was considering the technology we had at the time.

I met so many amazing people that year, and carried away so many amazing experiences. I even got to hang-out with Bill at his intern BBQ. I even worked with the future Mrs Gates (not knowing that they were an item). It was one of the coolest professional experiences I’ve ever had.

Wikipedia has a lot of its roots in the experience of Encarta, like it or not. I’m certainly no “Microsoft believer”, but I was there and remember what we did (and when we did it).

Cordell March 31, 2009 · 2:18 pm

The rise of Wikipedia and the fall of Encarta tells a larger story about the strengths of open versus closed systems. To believe the “experts” back in the 1980’s, Japan — the most closed, xenophobic country in the world — was destined to surpass the US technologically and dominate the global economy. Most now view Japan as an economic laggard with few truly innovative companies. And thanks to the influx of foreign scientists and engineers, the US still out innovates the world.

Yet sadly, the laissez-faire economy that has given the US its dominant position in the world economy is now being overturned for a monolithic, government-knows-best approach in such diverse areas as health care, energy, autos and even venture investing. Meanwhile, our government now is making it increasingly difficult for the world’s best and brightest to remain in the US once they graduate from American universities. Despite its success, we are letting an economic downturn discredit the open Wikipedia approach to economic development in favor of the closed Encarta one. Hopefully, the next White House occupant will pull the plug on America’s own version of Encarta.

Patrick March 31, 2009 · 2:32 pm

The real difference is that a fundamental issue of public trust changed over the years. In 1994, if wikipedia had launched, I think it would have experienced far more opposition than it does now (and that opposition is still quite strong). Encarta was carefully fact-checked, just like an old-school encyclopedia would have been. It was old-school integrity combined with new-school technology. No one ever said an encyclopedia needed to be “deep”. It’s a collection of averages and basic information on a wide variety of topics.

Anyone who replies on wikipedia (or an encylopedia) for “deep” information about any particular singular topic had best prepare themselves for a huge letdown. And on this note, this is why it makes no sense at all to debate Encarta -vs_ Wikipedia. In my book, that’s like debating Entertainment Tonight versus the TMZ show. Neither are very deep.

-Patrick (former Encarta Team member, 1992)

Mitch Golden March 31, 2009 · 2:53 pm

It is interesting that Microsoft fails at most everything they do that isn’t in their core monopoly businesses – Windows and Office. Given the vast resources they have at their disposal, their inability to come up with compelling products is pretty remarkable.

Patrick March 31, 2009 · 3:00 pm

Mitch Golden writes:

“Given the vast resources they have at their disposal, their inability to come up with compelling products is pretty remarkable.”

Oh really? Then I guess we should look to Google to start making some fantastic Hollywood blockbuster films (if they so chose). Clearly they have the resources.

Encarta had its time. But more than likely, by the time you ever noticed its existence, that time had long since passed.

AB March 31, 2009 · 4:21 pm

To Patrick (former Encarta Team member, 1992) –
If you think that Wikipedia vs Encarta is like the “Entertainment show” vs “TMZ” show, you have not used Wikipedia recently (recently meaning later than 1992)