In October of 1999, Chicago-based Encyclopedia Britannica made its first sortie into the World Wide Web by providing free browsing of its content to customers. They also decided to discontinue printing annually the complete revised set of 33 volumes, which, when arrayed side by side spanned a full two meters.
1999 年 10 月，總部設在美國芝加哥的大英百科全書跨出網路服務的一大步，開始提供使用者免費上網搜尋，也決定不再年年印行全套 33 冊、排列開來長達 2 公尺的紙本更新版（2010 年更新版一套售價 1,349 美元）。