As this happened, clip-art makers began emphasizing quantity over quality. Even T/Maker, which built its business on sales of small, high-quality clip-art packages, entered the volume clip-art market.

Microsoft announced in a blog post that it is shuttering its Clip Art library in favor of Bing Images, where users can now download royalty free images to use in their projects.

With Poly, Google wants to build the world’s most accessible library of shareable 3D objects to use for anything. It’s easy to forget how essential Clip Art felt in the 1990s. Microsoft’s ...