It was updated weekly. Constantly writing and maintaining so much information is almost certainly very expensive. Coupled with the fact that you have to be very careful before releasing each edit to make sure that no accidental personal beliefs or theories slip by (as that would be a diplomatic catastrophe), I reckon the cost of maintaining the thing could be very high.

I would wager that they're still going to maintain their own version of the World Factbook, and just simply not share it. This would allow them to cut out the very costly review step that I talked about.

Now whether that's a good decision or not is a completely different question.