SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft plans to close its Encarta online encyclopaedia, which competes in an arena dominated by communally-crafted free internet reference source Wikipedia.
The US software colossus said that on October 31 it will turn off all its Encarta websites everywhere except in Japan, with that service to be terminated on the last day of December.
‘The category of traditional encyclopaedias and reference material has changed,’ Microsoft said in an online message at its Encarta website on Monday.
‘People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.’
Encarta was launched in 1993 as competition for traditional reference books such as those offered by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Encarta’s popularity faded after the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation launched Wikipedia online in 2001.
While Wikipedia lets users continually update or refine entries, improvements suggested to Encarta must pass muster with editors before eventually being incorporated into the data base.
-Nampa-AFP
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