Comments on: End of Printed Britannica

By: Ignas

Ignas — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:59:31 +0000

I agree with William Gasarch

By: Tualha

Tualha — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:42:28 +0000

I doubt the online version will last much longer. I won’t shed any tears. About 10 years ago, I was reading the Britannica article on the game Go, and noted a very basic error (for those who know the game, the article referred to a group with two eyes as having “an eye”). I then spent over ten minutes searching the volumes for information on how to best contact the company to report an error, and eventually admitted defeat: I couldn’t even find a mailing address. Apparently, they didn’t want to hear it.

On Wikipedia, when you find an error, you just go ahead and *fix* it. No hoops to jump through, no gatekeepers to placate, and no money changing hands or restrictive copyrights, either. So goodbye, Britannica; you had a nice run, the world changed, you didn’t adapt, and now you join the dinosaurs.

By: Walt

Walt — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:04:05 +0000

Ugh. I put two t’s, and one n, rather than the other way around. I make variants of this mistake all the time. My brain apparently can only remember the word has a double consonant in it, but not which letter.

By: Mark Dominus

Mark Dominus — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:49:38 +0000

Also, I guess that not all of the 90% sales drop is attributable to Wikipedia: some have presumably been cannibalized by sales of various electronic editions of the Britannica.

By: Mark Dominus

Mark Dominus — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:48:11 +0000

“Britannica”. One ‘t’, like in “Britain”.

By: Walt

Walt — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:21:51 +0000

They experimented with #4 for a while, but they switched away from it so I guess it didn’t work out. I think they’re headed in the direction of #3.

I think that in general that being successful in business involves being successful at a specific kind of business, and the skills and know-how doesn’t usually translate over. Even if Blockbuster correctly anticipated the future, it doesn’t mean they knew how to execute on it.

By: William Gasarch

William Gasarch — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:28:09 +0000

Could Britanica have survived? If so then how?
1) Early on become an expert-apedia where they invite experts to do what
we now know Wikipedia does, only be a bit more careful on fact checking.
Would the experts do it for free? Doubtful.

2) Become what Wikipedia became. But is there a business model there?

3) Have it online (I’m sure they do) and sell access to Universities.
It would have to be the right price and also be such that to people
at the school it is transparent- no passcodes or such needed.

4) Have it free online but make money off of adds and donations.
Is that enough money?

5) (Side note) Britannica is a very old company so I can understand how
they could not quite keep up with the times. But what about blockbuster video?
They were a company born of the modern technical era, yet they too did not keep up with the times. They were late to go from vcr to dvd, they were late to go to the netflix-postal model, and I don’t know if they ever did the netflix-streaming model. I have less symapthy for them since they were born in an era where technology moves fast and they should have known that.