Jimmy Wales Stops Wikia Search--MS Encarta also Closed
Two very different projects have closed this week: Microsoft's commercial Encarta, and after just 14 months, the free search engine Wikia Search.
Encarta has been around since the '90's and has since been available on CD and DVD. Some articles have been integrated into MSN Search. The project has around 50.000 entries with updates over the Internet and other more traditional media. A subscription version was also available. From June, according to a Microsoft statement, sales of the media will stop and subscriptions refunded. World-wide closure of the website will take place in October, except for Japan, which will hang on until December 31. Competition projects like Pediatric killed Encarta, even if Microsoft does try to cloud the issue by claiming that people's search habits have changed.
Another project from Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has not been as successful as Wikipedia itself. After a short life, Wikia Search will also be discontinued. The reason, according to Wales, is although growth of the user-controlled search engine has been impressive, it's still well behind his expectations. He blames the current financial crisis.
"In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely. It's something I care about deeply. I will return to again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader" writes Wales on his website. Until then, he'll be devoting his time to other Wiki.com projects such as Wikianswers.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.