Encarta was the first CD-based computer encyclopaedia I ever used, so it was with some wistfulness that I read that Microsoft, its publisher, is to finish it off.

On October 31, 2009, the site says, the Encarta websites will be discontinued (the Japanese version will go on until December 31) and it's going to sell the software products (by now a DVD edition) by June. Existing Encarta subscribers will receive a refund for any fees paid for access after April 30, to the credit card used for the subscription.

The Guardian (or rather Paidcontent, its sister site) blames Wikipedia, which makes a certain amount of sense.

Most people will be happy to get, free, information that's probably correct, rather than pay for information that's certainly correct. That said, the study a few years ago that showed Wikipedia to be roughly as accurate as some paid-for encyclopaedias probably didn't help either.

With Encarta gone and its one-time competitor Grolier long-forgotten, that just leaves the venerable Britannica slugging it out with the young free pretender. The former charges £50 a year or £5 a month for access.

We looked at Britannica's latest DVD edition back in January, and came to the conclusion that it's harder and harder for a software encyclopaedia to compete with online ones, in terms of frequency of updates if nothing else. It'll be interesting to see whether Britannica decides to continue with its DVD edition after the current one.