Dictionaries on the Internet: an Overview

The proliferation of uncontrolled, perhaps uncontrollable dictionary resources on the Internet provokes the question as to whether Samuel Johnson's comment on dictionaries still applies in the age of the Web: "Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true" [Piozzi 1925]. Is, by analogy, a free lexicographical resource on the Net better than nothing? In this paper we shall examine the reactions to our withdrawal of two large bilingual dictionaries from an Internet site and the implications these reactions have for serious publishers with regard to their presence on the Web.