I blogged about how Wikipedia killed Encarta (the encyclopedia published by MicroSoft).
Today, here’-s a report on the demise of Wikia —-a search engine partially powered by human input (a la Wikipedia), and co-founded by Jimmy Wales. The Wired article lists all the search engine startups (Snap, PowerSet, Cuil, etc.) that miserably failed to dent into Google’-s de facto monopoly.
It was only a matter of time for Encarta. The most interesting tidbit I read following that announcement is that Encarta itself seriously damaged Britannica long before Wikipedia existed.
I don’t think the Wikia Search (just one product of Wikia) shutdown says much about Google’s dominance. WS could very well have carved out a profitable search niche that would not have been at all noticeable to Google.
Thanks.