Encarta

Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia and search engine published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, 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, Italian, 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 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. Microsoft continued to operate the Encarta online dictionary until 2011.

In 1985, Microsoft attempted to establish a partnership with Encyclopædia Britannica 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 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".

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. 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.^{[citation needed]}

Later that decade, Microsoft added content from Collier's Encyclopedia 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.^{[citation needed]}

Microsoft introduced several regional versions of Encarta localized for international markets. For example, the Brazilian Portuguese version was introduced in 1999 and suspended in 2002. The Spanish version was somewhat smaller than the English one, at 42,000 articles.^{[citation needed]}

In 2000, the full Encarta content became available on the World Wide Web to subscribers, with a subset available for free to anyone. In 2006, Websters Multimedia, a Bellevue, Washington 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.