Microsoft Encarta Will Shut Down

As an online encyclopedia there is now huge popularity of Wikipedia on the Internet. But once upon a time, there had huge recognition and one and only leadership of Encarta in all online encyclopedias. But in recent few years its service had been rapidly losing in the information reference battle against online giant encyclopedia, Wikipedia. So Microsoft makes a decision to discontinue their service of Encarta. Microsoft’s Website mentioned that, it will discontinue its MSN Encarta encyclopedia software and services over the course of this year. It would close down all Encarta sites in the world by the close of October 2009, except Japan, where they will close 2 months later.

The encyclopedia, which started in 1993, is shutting down after 16 years. The last version of the Encarta Premium 2009 had more than 62,000 detailed articles, immersive research experiences, and thousands of trusted web links. It retailed for $29.95. By contrast, the English version of Wikipedia boasted 2,818,976 articles as of March 31 which is fully free. So, why people will take Encarta’s service?

For the free service and plenty of collection of Wikipedia, within a few year it Beats Encarta very easily. So after this summer Encarta will no longer sell its Encarta software.