Microsoft ''Encarta'' is a discontinued

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article (publishing), articles or entries that are arranged Alp ...

and search engine published by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on

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, it was also available online via annual subscription, although later articles could also be viewed for free online with advertisements. By 2008, the complete English version, ''Encarta Premium'', consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive content, timelines, maps, atlases and homework tools. Microsoft published similar encyclopedias under the ''Encarta'' trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch,

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, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions contained contents licensed from national sources and different amounts of content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch-language version had content from the Dutch ''

Winkler Prins The ''Winkler Prins'' is a Dutch-language encyclopedia, founded by the Dutch poet and clergyman Anthony Winkler Prins (1817–1908) and published by Elsevier. It has run through nine printed editions; the first, issued in 16 volumes from 187 ...

'' encyclopedia. In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing both the ''Encarta'' disc and online versions. The MSN ''Encarta'' site was closed on October 31, 2009, in all countries except Japan, where it was closed on December 31, 2009.Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued
(MSN Encarta)

2009-10-31. Microsoft continued to operate the ''Encarta'' online dictionary until 2011.

History

Background

In 1985, Microsoft attempted to establish a partnership with ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

'' to create a CD-ROM version of their publication. Since their management felt it would not fit in with their traditional print-based offerings, ''Britannica'' rejected Microsoft's offer. By 1989, the software company struck a non-exclusive rights deal with the publishers of the ''

Funk & Wagnalls Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including ''A Standard Dictionary of the English Language'' (1st ed. 1893–5), and the ''Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia'' (25 volumes, 1st ed. 1912).Funk & Wagnalls N ...

Encyclopedia'', and considered a rewrite of the material. Following the successes of '' Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia'' (1989; published by ''Britannica'') and '' The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia'' (1992), Microsoft initiated their multimedia-encyclopedia project under the internal codename "Gandalf".

Launch

In 1993, "Gandalf" was officially launched as ''Encarta''; the name was created for Microsoft by an advertising agency. ''Encarta'' cost $395 upon release, although it soon dropped to $99, and was often bundled into the price of a new computer purchase.Tom Corddry
: "''Encarta'' was not given away but sold at retail for about $100, and sold wholesale to PC manufacturers who bundled it with new machines." The text of ''Funk & Wagnalls'' served as the basis of its first edition; Funk & Wagnalls continued to publish revised editions for several years independently of ''Encarta'', but ceased printing in the late 1990s. Later that decade, Microsoft added content from ''

Collier's Encyclopedia ''Collier's Encyclopedia'' is a discontinued general encyclopedia first published in 1949 by P. F. Collier and Son in the United States. With ''Encyclopedia Americana'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia'' became one of the t ...

'' and ''New Merit Scholar's Encyclopedia'' from Macmillan into ''Encarta'' after purchasing them. Thus the final Microsoft ''Encarta'' can be considered the successor of the ''Funk and Wagnalls'', ''Collier'', and ''New Merit Scholar'' encyclopedias. None of these formerly successful encyclopedias remained in print for long after being merged into ''Encarta''. Microsoft introduced several regional versions of ''Encarta'' localized for international markets. For example, the

Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...

version was introduced in 1999 and suspended in 2002. The Spanish version was somewhat smaller than the English one, at 42,000 articles.

Move to the web and demise

In 2000, the full ''Encarta'' content became available on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

to subscribers, with a subset available for free to anyone. In 2006, Websters Multimedia, a

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside (King County, Washington), Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area, and the f ...

subsidiary of London-based Websters International Publishers, took over maintenance of ''Encarta'' from Microsoft. The last version was ''Encarta Premium'' 2009, released in August 2008. Microsoft announced in April 2009 that it would cease to sell

Microsoft Student Microsoft Student is a discontinued application from Microsoft designed to help students in schoolwork and homework. It included Encarta, as well as several student-exclusive tools such as additional Microsoft Office templates (called Learning Es ...

and all editions of ''Encarta Premium'' software products worldwide by June 2009, citing changes in the way people seek information, and in the traditional encyclopedia and reference material market, as the key reasons behind the termination. Updates for ''Encarta'' were offered until October 2009. Additionally, MSN ''Encarta'' web sites were discontinued around October 31, 2009, with the exception of ''Encarta Japan'' which was discontinued on December 31, 2009. Existing MSN ''Encarta Premium'' (part of MSN Premium) subscribers were refunded. The demise of ''Encarta'' was widely attributed to competition from the free and user-generated

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

, which grew to be larger than ''Encarta'' from its early beginnings in 2001 due to the popularization by web search services like

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Contents and features

''Encarta'' standard edition included approximately 50,000 articles, with additional images, videos and sounds. The premium editions contained over 62,000 articles and other

content, such as 25,000 pictures and illustrations, over 300 videos and animations, and an interactive atlas with 1.8 million locations. Its articles were integrated with multimedia content and could include links to websites selected by its editors. ''Encarta'' articles in general were less lengthy and more summarized than the printed version of ''

'' or the online Wikipedia. Like most multimedia encyclopedias, ''Encarta'' articles tended to provide an overview of the subject rather than an exhaustive coverage and can only be viewed one at a time. A sidebar could display alternative views, essays, journals or original materials relevant to the topic. For example, when reading about computers, it featured

annals Annals (, from , "year") are a concise history, historical record in which events are arranged chronology, chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record. Scope The nature of the distinction betw ...

since 1967 of the computer industry. ''Encarta'' also supported

closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) is the process of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information, where the viewer is given the choice of whether the text is displayed. Closed cap ...

for the hearing impaired. A separate program, called ''Encarta Research Organizer'' was included in early versions for gathering and organizing information and constructing a Word document-based report. Later versions included ''Encarta Researcher'', a browser plugin to organize information from ''Encarta'' articles and web pages into research projects. Content copied from ''Encarta'' was appended with a

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

boilerplate message after the selection. The user interface allowed for viewing content with only images, videos, sounds, animations, 360-degree views, virtual tours, charts and tables or only interactives. Encarta was originally available for sale on 1–5

s or a DVD. Some new PCs were shipped with an OEM edition of Encarta. ''Encarta 2000'' and later had "Map Treks", which were tours of geographic features and concepts. Microsoft also had for a brief period a separate product known as ''Encarta Africana'' which was an encyclopedia of black history and culture. Starting with the 2001 version, it was integrated into the main Encarta Reference Suite. ''Encarta 2002'' and onward featured ''3D Virtual Tours'' of ancient structures, for example the

Acropolis An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens ...

; 2D panoramic images of world wonders or major cities; and a virtual flight feature which allowed users to fly a virtual airplane over a coarsely generated artificial

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

area. Version ''2002'' also introduced the ability to install the entire encyclopedia locally to the hard disk drive to prevent frequent swapping of discs, and it updated far more often than its predecessors, with a rate of nearly 3–4 updates per week compared to the monthly updates that were used in prior versions of Encarta. ''Encarta 2003'' incorporated literature guides and book summaries, foreign language translation dictionaries, a ''Homework Center'' and ''Chart Maker''. ''Encarta'' ''Visual Browser'', available since the 2004 version, presented a user with a list of related topics making them more discoverable. A collection of 32

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

videos were also later added. ''Encarta 2005'' introduced another program called ''Encarta Kids'' aimed at children to make learning fun. ''Encarta'' also included a

trivia Trivia is information and data that are considered to be of little value. Modern usage of the term ''trivia'' dates to the 1960s, when college students introduced question-and-answer contests to their universities. A board game, ''Trivial Purs ...

game called "MindMaze" (accessible through Ctrl+Z) in which the player explores a castle by answering questions whose answers can be found in the encyclopedia's articles. There was also a "Geography Quiz" and several other games and quizzes, some quizzes also in ''Encarta Kids''. Until 2005, ''Encarta'' came in three primary software editions: Standard, Deluxe, and Reference Library (called Reference Suite until Encarta 2002) (price and features in that order). Beginning with ''Encarta 2006'', however, when ''Websters Multimedia'' took over its maintenance, ''Encarta'' became a feature of Microsoft Student. Although it was possible to purchase only the ''Encarta'' encyclopedia separately, Microsoft Student bundles together ''Encarta Premium'' with Microsoft Math (a graphing-calculator program) and Learning Essentials, an add-in which provides templates for

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

. In addition, the Deluxe and Reference Library editions were discontinued: absorbed into a new, more comprehensive Premium package. ''Encarta'' user interface was shared with Microsoft Student, and was streamlined to reduce clutter with only a Search box which returned relevant results. However, it became no longer possible to simply browse all the encyclopedia articles alphabetically.

World Atlas

The dynamic maps were generated with the same engine that powered

Microsoft MapPoint Microsoft MapPoint is a discontinued software program and service created by Microsoft that allows users to view, edit and integrate maps. The software and technology are designed to facilitate the geographical visualization and analysis of eithe ...

software. The map was a

virtual globe A virtual globe is a 3D computer graphics, three-dimensional (3D) software model or representation of Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the vie ...

that one could freely rotate and magnify to any location down to major streets for big cities. The globe had multiple surfaces displaying political boundaries, physical landmarks, historical maps and statistical information. One could selectively display statistical values on the globe surface or in a tabular form, different sized cities, various geological or human-made features and reference lines in a map. The maps contained

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference providing direct access to Data (computing), data by a user (computing), user's point and click, clicking or touchscreen, tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to ...

s to related articles ("Map Trek") and also supported a "Dynamic Sensor" that provides the

latitude In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at t ...

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east- west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lett ...

place name Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for a proper nam ...

, population and local time for any point on the globe. ''Encarta'' also generated a visible-light moon atlas with names of major craters and hyperlinks. However, it did not include a planetarium, but instead had a small interactive

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

-only map. In addition to database generated maps, many other illustrative maps in ''Encarta'' ("Historical Maps") were drawn by artists. Some more advanced maps were

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

: for example, the large African map for Africana could display information such as political boundaries or the distribution of African

flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

Criticism of regional variations

Robert McHenry, while Editor-in-Chief of the ''

'', criticized ''Encarta'' for differences in factual content between national versions of ''Encarta'', accusing Microsoft of "pandering to local prejudices" instead of presenting subjects objectively. An article written by

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

addressed the nature of writing encyclopedias for different regions.

Technology

Before the emergence of the

for information browsing, Microsoft recognized the importance of having an engine that supported a

markup language A markup language is a Encoding, text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate au ...

, full text search, and extensibility using software objects. The

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

display, hyperlinking and search software was created by a team of

Division developers in the late 1980s who designed it as a generalized engine for uses as diverse as interactive help,

document management system A document management system (DMS) is usually a computerized system used to store, share, track and manage files or documents. Some systems include history tracking where a log of the various versions created and modified by different users is r ...

s and as ambitious as a multimedia encyclopedia. ''Encarta'' was able to use various Microsoft technologies because it was extensible with software components for displaying unique types of multimedia information. For example, a snap in map engine is adapted from its MapPoint software. The hypertext and search engine used by ''Encarta'' also powered Microsoft Bookshelf. ''Encarta'' used database technologies to generate much of its multimedia content. For example, ''Encarta'' generated each zoomable map from a global

geographic information system A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and Geographic information system software, software that store, manage, Spatial analysis, analyze, edit, output, and Cartographic design, visualize Geographic data ...

database on demand. When a user used the

copy and paste Cut, copy, and paste are essential Command (computing), commands of modern human–computer interaction and user interface design. They offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data (computing), data through a computer's us ...

function of Microsoft Windows on ''Encarta'' on more than five words, ''Encarta'' automatically appended a

boilerplate message after the paste.

User editing

Early in 2005, Encarta's editor-in-chief at the time, Gary Alt, announced that the online ''Encarta'' started to allow users to suggest changes to existing articles. ''Encarta'' content was accessible using a conversational interface on

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...

via the MSN

Bot Bot or BOT may refer to: Sciences Computing and technology * Chatbot, a computer program that converses in natural language * Internet bot, a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet **Spambot, an internet bot ...

"Encarta Instant Answers". The bot could answer many encyclopedia related questions directly in the IM window. It used short sentences from the ''Encarta'' website, and sometimes displays full articles in the

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

-based browser on the right. It also could complete simple mathematical and advanced algebra problems. This service was also available in German, Spanish, French and Japanese.

Updates

Each summer Microsoft published a new version of ''Encarta''. However, despite the inclusion of news-related and some supplementary articles, ''Encarta'' contents had not been changed substantially in its later years. Besides the yearly update, the installed offline copy could be updated over the Internet for a certain period for free depending on the edition. Some articles (usually about 2,000) were updated to reflect important changes or events. When the update period expired, an advertisement prompting to upgrade to the new version was displayed to the user occasionally.

Reception

The editors of ''

PC Gamer US ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

'' nominated ''Microsoft Encarta '95'' for their 1994 "Best Educational Product" award, although it lost to the CD-ROM adaptation of ''

The Way Things Work ''The Way Things Work'' is a 1988 nonfiction book by David Macaulay with technical text by Neil Ardley. It is a whimsical introduction to everyday machines and the scientific principles behind their operation, describing machines as simple as ...

''.

In popular culture

''Encarta'' is referenced in the title of the podcast ''Encarta & Chill'' in which the hosts discuss the 90s including memories of ''Encarta''. Microsoft's recent Civilization Competitor Ara: History Untold calls its in-game encyclopedia Encarta

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1993 software American online encyclopedias Discontinued Microsoft software Dutch online encyclopedias Educational software for Windows French online encyclopedias German online encyclopedias Italian online encyclopedias Japanese online encyclopedias MSN Spanish online encyclopedias Windows-only proprietary software 20th-century encyclopedias 21st-century encyclopedias Products and services discontinued in 2009 Timeline software