Who Needs Encarta When You Have the Web?

"On October 31, 2009, MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009."I remember being favorably impressed by Encarta back in the day. Before the World Wide Web... before broadband... before Wikipedia... Encarta nicely scratched the computer encyclopedia itch. It was convenient and useful though often suspect in its attention to detail and speed of correction.

Before Encarta students were required to actually type the words they were plagiarizing from encyclopedias! Welcome to the brave new world.

As is so often the case for Microsoft products Encarta wasn't the first CD based encyclopedia (Academic American Encyclopedia) nor was it Microsoft's own original scholarship burned onto the CD (Funk and Wagnalls). It did carry Microsoft's reputation which was enough to help it drive well established paper and lesser known digital encylopedias to the curb. Now it joins them there.