The Internet has become the greatest source of knowledge. It is also the most comprehensive. Since its widespread arrival in homes in the mid-1990s, it has offered freedom of expression accessible to everyone. Among the many applications and websites, I recall the famous Encarta 95 encyclopedia. This was back when the word “Google” didn’t even exist.

The encyclopedia was incredibly thorough, and there was no longer a need to visit massive libraries to find scientific information. It was now available on a small, fragile CD (what we had before DVDs).

After that, search engines like Lycos, Yahoo, Altavista, and WebCrawler, along with browsers like Netscape, made poor Encarta feel obsolete. Then, as the millennium turned, Google arrived to change everything—and it unconsciously became everyone’s favorite site.

We find everything on Google, but when we want the most precise information, we undoubtedly turn to Wikipedia. Virtually all the world’s knowledge is available on this portal for free, and it’s entirely editable by users. Of course, there are errors and incomplete entries. Nevertheless, society has globally accepted that if it’s on Wikipedia, it’s highly probable that it’s true.

Now, AI engines are on the rise. It’s possible that the extraordinary Wikipedia meet the same fate as the old Encarta. But until that happens, Wikipedia remains, to this day, my favorite website.