Word: britannica
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PAUL HOFFMAN is president of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author, most recently, of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
Gates first approached the Encyclopedia Britannica for assistance on his project, which he termed "a black Encyclopedia Britannica...
After Encyclopedia Britannica rejected the idea in the 1970s, they did not work on it again until 1995, Gates said...
...hundreds of front-line businesses, this cerebral revolution has become very real. And very unpleasant. Talk to the folks at 230-year-old Encyclopaedia Britannica, which two years ago dismissed its entire home sales force in North America after the arrival of the Internet at $8.50 a month made the idea of owning a $1,250, 32-volume set of books seem less appealing. Kids, everyone knew, were just as happy to get their information online or from a CD-ROM. In fact, they preferred it. The 170-year-old Journal of Commerce, which made most of its money from...
...geeks have usurped an old financial term, disintermediation, and given it a new meaning to describe what happened to Britannica. To them it means the removal of middlemen, the intermediaries who smooth the operation of any economy--folks like travel agents, stockbrokers, car dealers and traveling salesmen. These people are the grease of a consumer economy, the folks who help you do things more efficiently than you could do them alone. But that's all changing: the Net is creating a new, self-service economy. Gates, who was late in recognizing the value of the Net, nonetheless has come...