Microsoft Kills Encarta In Victory For Community Content

Microsoft has announced that it plans to shut down its Encarta encyclopedia web sites by October and dump its CD-based versions as well, effectively conceding the online reference market to community-driven sites like Wikipedia. In traffic terms, that battle would seem to have been won a long time ago. Case in point: my visiting the Encarta AU site to check if it was still there must be the first time I’ve visited the site in five years or more, while it would be a rare day I didn’t use Wikipedia. (The local site hasn’t yet reflected the planned closure, but I’d expect that to happen in the next few days.)