Wikipedia Didn't Kill Brittanica — Encarta Did

rudy_wayne writes "The end of Encyclopedia Britannica has been widely reported and its demise has been blamed on Wikipedia. However, this article at Wired points out that the real reason is something entirely different. 'In 1990 Britannica had $650 million in revenue. In 1996, long before Wikipedia existed, it was bankrupt and the entire company was sold for $135 million. What happened in between was Encarta. Even though Encarta didn't make money for Microsoft and Britannica produced its own encyclopedia CDs, Encarta was an inexpensive, multimedia encyclopedia that helped Microsoft sell Windows PCs to families. And once you had a PC in the living room or den where the encyclopedia used to be, it was all over for Mighty Britannica. It's not that Encarta made knowledge cheaper, it's that technology supplanted its role as a purchasable 'edge' for over-anxious parents. They bought junior a new PC instead of a Britannica. When Wikipedia emerged five years later, Britannica was already a weakened giant. It wasn't a free and open encyclopedia that defeated its print edition. It was the personal computer itself.'"

Comments

not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft first plan was to produce a digital Encyclopedia Brittanica, but the guys at "Encyclopedia Brittanica" declined, therefore they Brittanica killed Birttanica.
Source: I'm old and I remember that happening.

Re:And brittanica did not see the threat

[billcopc]

That's not selection bias, that's educated wisdom.

Anyone in 1996 had to be quite the luddite, to not see where this computer "fad" was headed. I'll even say that if a Britannica rep saw Encarta, and did not immediately shit bricks, that person was infinitely dumber than their own gullible customers.

For myself, growing up, Britannica was the most vibrant example of informercial-style deceptive marketing. Corny actors, offers for a "free promotional booklet", a big dumb 1-800 number with repeated commands to "Call NOW!", and some bullshit gift for ordering in the next 15 minutes, because the one thing you really want when buying a shelf of useless books is even more useless books to litter your coffee table.

I really cannot think of any occasion where the two-paragraph overview from a printed encyclopedia ever helped me accomplish anything. If I needed to study something specific, I went to the library and borrowed a few books on the topic. I didn't need to spend $1500 on a bunch of superficial books edited by non-experts, just as I wouldn't spend a penny on Wikipedia today. Encyclopedias are what you read when you don't really care all that much about the subject.

Consider this thought experiment

[djl4570]

Find some old encyclopedias, A set from each of the following years: 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960 and so on
Look up the following in each set:
Israel
Communist
Transistor
Ku Klux Klan
Nazi
Steel

Selling computers

[spudnic]

This article is very true. At the time Encarta came out I was working for a company that sold PCs. We were located in an area where there were many affluent African American families. Not being raciest by any means, but typically all we had to do was bring up the article on Martin Luther King and start the "dream" speech video and they just had to have that for their kids. Encarta sold the computer.

Re:Disagree.

[TheRaven64]

You obviously don't remember the '90s very well. Multimedia was the selling point. Remember the MPC1 and MPC2 specs? Every computer came with a CD ROM drive and a sound card. A lot didn't come with a modem. Windows 95 even shipped without a web browser, but you can bet most computers from the time were bundled with Encarta, Thompson or similar. In 1993, you could probably have put most of the contents of the web on a single CD.

Re:Well I disagree with you...

[powerlinekid]

Agreed. We bought a new PC back around '95 which came with Encarta. While we did have internet, I have fond memories of browsing through Encarta just looking through the articles. The one that most stands out in my mind was the moon landing page which had the actual video footage of Armstrong first stepping down. Brittanica couldn't compete with that.