Microsoft Encarta: It Killed Britannica, Then Wikipedia Killed It

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In 1985, Microsoft asked Encyclopaedia Britannica to partner on a CD-ROM edition. Britannica said no. Its business rested on door-to-door salesmen persuading parents to spend $1,000 to $1,500 on leather-bound prestige, and a cheap plastic disc looked like a toy that would eat its own profits. So Microsoft licensed the text of Funk and Wagnalls, the encyclopedia sold volume by volume at the grocery store, and built a multimedia shell around it under the code name Gandalf.

Encarta launched in 1993 at $395, soon dropped to $99, and then came bundled with new home PCs. This episode covers how it squeezed an interactive world onto a 680 megabyte disc, why its regional editions set off a public argument about whether facts should change by country, and how a closed, professionally edited product lost to a free site anyone could edit. Microsoft discontinued Encarta in 2009, undone by the same kind of shift it had once forced on print.

Premium editions held over 62,000 articles, 25,000 pictures, and more than 300 videos and animations, made to fit with MIDI audio, vector graphics, and postage-stamp video clips.
Extras included the MindMaze castle trivia game, 3D virtual tours of sites like the Acropolis, and dynamic maps drawn by the engine behind Microsoft MapPoint.
Microsoft absorbed the content of rivals such as Collier's, ending their lives in print.
Former Britannica editor-in-chief Robert McHenry accused Encarta of pandering to local prejudices in its national editions, and Bill Gates answered with an article of his own.
Encarta moved to a web subscription model around 2000 and let users suggest edits by 2005, but Wikipedia updated by the minute while Encarta still waited on editorial review.

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