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

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to finally see a slashdot article that blames Microsoft for something.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's nice to see that the "editor" managed to correct one of the misspellings of "Britannica" in the summary.

Re:Finally

[just_a_monkey]

If only there was somewhere one could look up how things are spelled...

Re:Finally

[mcgrew]

Actually it blames PCs, not MS, (it gives Grolier the same treatment as MS) but it mostly blames Britannica itself for being late to the digital party with a crappy CD. In short, Britannica failed because the folks who ran it ran it incredibly poorly.

Re:Finally

[conlaw]

Actually, the best bet nowdays seems to be typing a word the way you think it's spelled in as a Google search. They'll generally correct it for you; for instance typing "numonya" brings a prompt for "pneumonia." The old "look it up in the dictionary" doesn't work unless you already have a pretty good idea of how the word is spelled.

Re:Finally

[tlhIngan]

The company is still as strong as ever and has lots more markets in education etc. that it never had before and there is no competition for them yet. Wikipedia is not competition as it is not verified and most reputable universities and research institutes etc. will not accept citations from it, and who even knows where Encarta went.

Incorrect.

Wikipedia NOR Britannica are citable sources. EVER. Nor any other encyclopedia. They may be citable in grade school, but not once you get to university.

It's always been that way, and it affects all encyclopedias and Wikipedia equally. It does not matter at all if Britannica verified everything.

Encyclopedias are not primary sources. They never have, and never will, be citable.

The whole point of an encyclopedia is to gain knowledge in a general sense. If you know little about a subject, an encyclopedia works great because it gives you background information to begin your hunt. Even better, it's got a references section that helps direct you to the primary sources to which you can look up the information and get a deeper understanding. And THOSE sources are citable.

The same goes for Wikipedia. Ignoring errors and edit wars, Wikipedia will never be a primary source (and they aim not to be, either - no original research). Wikipedia's got an advantage over Britannica in that it has a lot of pop-culture articles and thus is more useful.

The quickest way to get laughed out of higher education is to cite an encyclopedia. Britannica, Encarta, Wikipedia, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter who's an authority figure. When you're doing research, they're excellent starting points because they cover the general background and have the much-needed reference section of every article to launch your research.

Uh oh

[SJHillman]

I still have my Encarta CDs. Does that mean I'm harboring a murderer?

Encarta killed Brittanica

[PPH]

[citation needed]

Re:Encarta killed Brittanica

[Megahard]

[citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta

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.

They forgot to patent

[Logger]

If only Britannica would have patented cataloging a large amount of factual information in an indexed fashion...

Misleading headline on summary

[DragonWriter]

I doubt this. Encarta wasn't all that useful to me when it could have been.

Depite the headline on TFS, TFA (and even the body of TFS) says the PC displaced the print encyclopedia, not that electronic encyclopedias, or any particular one of them, did. Encarta is mentioned as one factor that helped Microsoft promote the Windows PC in this niche, but the contention isn't that Encarta displaced Britannica as a source of knowledge but that the personal computer displaced the print encyclopedia as a parental purchase.

Re:And brittanica did not see the threat

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight, my Segway stock is going to go through the roof. That and "push media" companies with VRML sites.

This is a real Kodak moment!

[LeenusT]

Hmmm, I've seen this situation somewhere else in the world...

Re:And brittanica did not see the threat

[nine-times]

I had a copy and immediately saw that multimedia versions would eventually kill the paper version.

Yeah, that's the thing-- it wasn't Encarta per se. Encarta was terrible and useless. What really caused the decline in sales was the *idea* that encyclopedias would eventually be digital. What some people may not remember is that Encyclopedias were very expensive, and so they were considered an investment that would pay off over several decades. It was a source of a wide world of information that you otherwise wouldn't be able to access without going to a library. Once people realized that the information might be available in digital form within the next few years, it no longer made sense to invest in something that was supposed to pay off over decades.

So it wasn't that Brittanica lost out to Encarta, though it may be that Encarta helped some people realize that the paper encyclopedia was doomed.

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

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.

1946 Britannica

[ODBOL]

Which I grabbed opportunistically at a library sale.

It calls itself "A New Survey of Universal Knowledge," and the founding date of 1768 is easier to find than the revision date.

Israel, quoted in entirety: "ISRAEL, the national designation of the Jews. The Hebrew name means "God strives" or "rules" (see Gen. xxxii. 28; and the allusion in Hosea xii. 4). It was borne by their ancestor, Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes. For some centuries the term was applied to the northern kingdom, as distinct from Judah, although the feeling of national unity extended it so as to include both."

Communist: no entry. There is an entry of 2+ pages on "COMMUNISM, a term often loosely used to denote different systems of social organization aiming at common property of the means of production, or at an equal distribution of weath and income, or at both. ..." The bulk of the article refers to the Russian revolution and subsequent communist government. It is fairly free with the author's negative opinion of Russian communism.

Ku Klux Klan: about 1 page. "KU KLUX KLAN. There have been two distinct organizations of this name in American history. The first Ku Klux Klan was an outgrowth of the tense feeling in the South during the reconstruction period succeeding the Civil War; the second was organized during the World War and attained is greatest strength in the period of social and economic readjustment which followed the restoration of peace. ..." I find this article more objective in tone than the one on communism. It refers to the "scalawags" and "carpet baggers," and appears to accept the view of an over-reaching reconstruction, and refers to the first Klan as "a more or less successful revolution against the reconstruction and an overthrow of the governments based on negro suffrage or 'Carpetbag' government."

Nazi: about 1/3 page. "NAZI, a popular abbreviation for a member of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workingmen's party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, commmonly designated by its initials, NSDAP). ..." More objective in tone than the article on Communism, similar in tone to the one on Ku Klux Klan. I can't resist the last sentence: "Today, just as Christians draw their faith from the Bible and the words of Jesus, so Nazis find the expression of their faith and beliefs in Hitler's book,My Battle (Mein Kampf), and in his speeches and decrees."

Steel: only a reference to subsections. "STEEL: see Iron and Steel; Wire Rope; Bessemer Steel; Structural Engineering; Open Hearth Steel; High Speed Steel; Manganese Steel; Molybdenum Steel; Mushet Steel; Nickel Steel; Nickel Chromium Steel; Tool Steel; Tungsten Steel; Vanadium Steel; Nitrogen Hardening; Stainless Steel; Steels, Alloy; Alloys; Pressed Metal; Sheets, Iron and Steel; and other specific headings." "STEELS, ALLOY" covers more than 3 pages.

Transistor: no entry. I really checked, just to be sure. One should always confirm the obvious, since the surprise value of a contradiction would be so great. The enclopedia goes from "TRANSFORMER" (the electrical kind) directly to "TRANSIT CIRCLE or MERIDIAN CIRCLE." (Notice that I quoted the previous and following entries sorta like a DNS response for a nonexistent entry.)