Digital Home Thoughts: Microsoft Killing Encarta

"Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will discontinue both its MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software, which have both been surpassed by rising competitors, like Wikipedia. In a message posted on the MSN Encarta Web site, Microsoft says, "Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.""

This doesn't come as a big surprise, but I do think it's unfortunate - as much as I enjoy Wikipedia, for research purposes I think it's always important to have more than one source of information. I don't have the paranoia that some people do about inaccurate information on Wikipedia, but having content written by professionals can never be a bad thing as a secondary source of information to fact-check the primary source. Goodbye Encarta; even though I haven't used you in years, I'll still miss you...