Microsoft is closing its Encarta digital encyclopedia

The Encarta e-encyclopedia, the brainchild of Microsoft, once pushed its print competitors out of the bookshelves of ordinary people because of its obvious advantages. However, now Encarta itself has fallen victim to a technological leap, in the digital world, the developed technologies of Web search and Wikipedia have long and rightfully dominated, and it is clearly already “not formatted”.

Microsoft says it will roll up the online encyclopedia service in October of this year and completely stop selling the PC version in June.
For the first time Encarta saw the light in the distant 1993 year and was sold on CD carriers.
Critics have repeatedly asked questions about Microsoft's editorial decisions regarding their encyclopedia, for example, regarding the fact that there was a picture of Bill Gates, and no photo of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

However, it is necessary to pay tribute, this example of the electronic knowledge base was one of the first to prove the advantages of digital content over the printed one.
Encarta had a fast and convenient (at that time) search engine that contained hundreds of images, videos and audio files.
Also, Encarta had another powerful advantage in those still early stages of the Internet development - it allowed downloading updates, while articles in its paper talmud competitors naturally became irrelevant over time.
But CD-ROMs containing knowledge bases quickly turned into a relic as soon as high-speed Internet access became widespread. Web search technology has leaped ahead, and innovative projects such as Wikipedia have become increasingly trusted and popular.
Both the paid and free versions of Microsoft Enclosure were rapidly losing demand.
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“Nowadays, how people search and process information is not very similar to how they did it in the not-so-distant past,” the official statement on the project website says.
The company also reports that no one will be offended and users with premium subscriptions to the digital encyclopedia services ($ 4.95 per month or $ 29.9 per year) will receive reimbursement for services paid for the period up to April 30. Users will have access to the Web version of the encyclopedia immediately until the server is turned off.

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