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Between britannica.com and Merriam-Webster, their sites get 120 million visits per month, per SimilarWeb. That's not ChatGPT level popularity, but it's way bet
by dougb5 2y ago
Between britannica.com and Merriam-Webster, their sites get 120 million visits per month, per SimilarWeb. That's not ChatGPT level popularity, but it's way better than mere survival. It might even be more "visits" than their hardcopy books got back in the day. (At least in the case of Britannica, it surely is -- EB only ever sold 7 million copies in its history. [1]).
The idea that they're turning into an "AI Company" is just the headline writer's spin on things; I don't think that's how they see themselves at all.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/03/encyclopaedia-britannica-kills-its-print-edition https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/03/encyclopaedi...
- Cpoll 2y agoIf 1 million of those copies went to public or school libraries, it's not impossible to imagine that they were referenced 5 times a day each on average—before the internet became mainstream. That makes 150 million "visits" a month.
- cinntaile 2y agoThat doesn't make any extra money, internet visits are more valuable.
- f1shy 2y agoDo you have any idea what the price of that thing was, back in the days?!
- dougb5 2y agoThere's an order of magnitude fewer libraries than that, but I get your point, and you may be right. It's an interesting "Fermi problem". I wonder how these numbers compare to the dictionary, which is much cheaper but was also much more widely sold. BTW Microsoft Encarta clobbered the print EB a few years before the Web finished the job. EB sales fell by 50% within three years of its release! See "The Reference Wars" for a closer look at this: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%2520Files/Reference%2520Wars%2520-%2520Greenstein_6c4ac193-51eb-4758-a5a6-a4c412261411.pdf https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%2520Files/Reference%2520...