Sorry Encarta, it's the End of the Line

Posted 03/31/2009 at 1:45pm | by Paul Lilly

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Microsoft this week has confirmed that it plans to jettison out of the encyclopedia business and discontinue nearly all of its online Encarta products by October. The sole exception is Encarta Japan, which will run through the end of the year before being retired. In addition, the software giant will also stop selling Student and Encarta Premium software, both of which included the online encyclopedia.

"Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years," Microsoft wrote in a notice on its Encarta website. "However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft's goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today's consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business."

Encarta has been around for over a decade with the latest version having been released in August, 2008. It included over 62,000 articles in the Premium edition and is available in a number of forms and languages, according to Wikipedia. Speaking of which, we imagine there must be quite a bit of celebrating going on among Wikipedia's ranks.