[Foundation-l] Britannica became free

[geni]

2008/12/22 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
> to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
> under the weight of their own ineptitude.
>
> We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
> how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
> one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
> business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
> Britannica" campaign?

Very little. We can't afford to buy it. Britannica's survival in some
form is not a concern. The brand and the content are worth enough that
if it's current owners give up there will always be someone looking to
buy. If it were sold tomorrow likely candidates would be Microsoft
(who wanted it for encarta and would probably still go for it if the
price was low enough), Google who might try using it to populate knol,
Yahoo to annoy google. It fits answers.com's profile if they survive
that long.

Then there are various media companies that might think about it. News
Corp for example.


-- 
geni