Microsoft closes its digital encyclopedia Encarta

The electronic encyclopedia Encarta, the brainchild of Microsoft, once pushed its printed competitors off the bookshelves of ordinary people, due to its obvious advantages. However, now Encarta itself has fallen victim to a technological leap, the developed world of web search and Wikipedia have long and rightfully dominated the digital world, and it is already clearly “not a format”.

Microsoft says it will curtail the online encyclopedia service in October this year and completely stop selling the PC version in June.
For the first time Encarta saw the light in the distant 1993, and was sold on CD media.
Critics have repeatedly asked questions about Microsoft editorial decisions regarding their encyclopedia, for example, regarding the fact that Bill Gates was there in the photograph, but there is no photo of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

However, we must pay tribute, this example of an electronic knowledge base was one of the first to prove the advantages of digital content over print.
Encarta had a quick and convenient (at that time) search system, it contained hundreds of images, videos and audio files.
Encarta also had another powerful advantage in the still early stages of the Internet - it allowed downloading updates, while articles in its competing paper Talmuds naturally became irrelevant over time.
But CD-ROM media containing knowledge bases quickly turned into a relic as soon as high-speed Internet access became widespread. Web search technologies have leaped forward rapidly, and innovative projects such as Wikipedia have become increasingly trusted and popular.
Both the paid and free versions of Microsoft Encart were rapidly losing demand.

“Nowadays, the way people seek and process information is not very similar to how they did it in the not so distant past,” the project’s website said in an official statement.
The company also reports that no one will be offended and users with premium subscriptions to the digital encyclopedia services ($ 4.95 per month or $ 29.9 per year) will receive refunds for services paid for the period until April 30. Users will have access to the Web version of the encyclopedia immediately until the server is disconnected.

primary source