Quote:
Originally Posted by elemenoP
But if the information they are offering is now available for free, any time on any computer, how would the above have helped keep them from going out of business?
eP
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Over the past 20 years Britannica went from a respected publishing company to slowly bleeding to death; laying off the editors and content producers instead of expanding it.
If they had actually taken advantage of the cdrom publishing era to move to digital and diversified their portfolio they could've raked in all the money (Billions) that MS made off encarta. Properly invested, they could have grown their business and now they wouldn't be an afterthought.
The problem is that they paid to heed to digital until the mid-90's and by then Encarta was entrenched and like old doddering generals have been fighting the last war. By the time they got into CDs, CD encyclopedias were a commodity; by the time they got online Wikipedia was already in place.
The problem, as pointed out in the NYT piece, is that Britannica online is much smaller than it needs to be a proper competitor to Wikipedia. Their scope is too narrow and they are getting squeezed out by Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, and even Google.
Wikipedia is popular and useful but it is hardly the ultimate information service.
There is still room for alternatives and the Britannica brand would be very valuable in that arena but their management still doesn't get the digital realms.