On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 9:59 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/business/03digi.html?_r=1
By Randall Stross. He blames Google, not Wikipedia, for Encarta's demise.
I completely disagree with him. Being at the top of Google's search results is one of the major things that made Wikipedia as successful as it is. It's entirely plausible to conceive of a world where wikipedia didn't exist and Encarta would be listed as the first hit when you searched for "James Clerk Maxwell", or whatever you were interested in. The reason that they're not is simply because Wikipedia is better.
(btw, that's a small insight into my subconcious; I was thinking "pick a random historical person", and came up with "James Clerk Maxwell". Don't know what that's about)
--Oskar