In 1985, shortly after the release of Windows 1.0, Bill Gates set Min Lee on a mission to find a partner for a digital encyclopedia product that would serve as a reference companion to Microsoft’s productivity applications. Lee then approached Britannica, the undisputed leader in the encyclopedia market, who’d recently released a new version of the fifteenth edition of their encyclopedia. Microsoft proposed a partnership to produce a multimedia CD-ROM version of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In exchange for non-exclusive rights to Britannica’s text, Microsoft would pay Britannica a royalty on each copy of the CD-ROM product sold. Britannica immediately declined Lee’s proposal.
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Unfortunately, Wikipedia continued to grow, and Encarta sales declined.
Not seeing the unfortunate angle to this…
I can see the writer’s point with regard to Encarta being a much more interactive experience that you don’t get with the likes of Wikipedia, but you’re right, it’s not that unfortunate that knowledge is being shared by Wikipedia for free
Now I remember . I can’t believe that I once asked for Microsoft Encarta for a birthday
I leaned more from Encarta and Age of Empires than i did from anything else
Wololo!
Why am I feeling blue all of a sudden
I’ve got a dorkier story: I asked for speech dictation software.
Jfc I had forgotten those were the shit back then, with those dorky long microphones, plugged to a PC. Thank you for remind me how old I am.
Probably Dragon Dictate?
Ahh yes I remember it.
I remember when that was recommended to be used with a 2nd drive as the install root ('cos the primary IDE didn’t have the headroom for all the I/O - man, we’ve come a long way!)
Aww, so nostalgic, that was one of the first things we did on a PC as children. Listening to many nations anthems in terible midi quality __
There seem to be quite a few up on archive.org:
Encarta was amazing as a child. Came with videos & stuff on the entries. I learned so much.
Why the abrupt ending? Where’s the rest 😭 did Britannica launch their own competing product? How did they react to Encarta’s success? Where are both products today?
Sorry, I put the link wrong.
Thanks, that was a great read!
Yayy fixed, thank you 😁
Having spent so much of my youth using the familiar cream and dark brown 1970’s World Book Encyclopaedias, with the ever growing collection of Year Books, this was amazing. I was blown away watching videos of things like the JFK moon speech. This for many like me I imagine meant the end of flipping through physical encyclopaedias.
The clip Encarta included from this song will forever be burned into my brain.
Those graphics. 🫨
Peak performance for their time.
