Google is officially in the wiki business, with its acquisition of
JotSpot.
Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, though
according to Google’s FAQ, the deal is officially closed.
JotSpot was founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer.
According to Kraus, Google had attracted the attention of JotSpot over the
past three years. Google has launched or acquired applications such as Google Spreadsheets and Writely, which are similar in nature to what JotSpot was
doing.
“It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of
people can create, manage and share information online,” Kraus wrote in a
blog posting. “Then when we had conversations with people at Google we found
ourselves completing each other’s sentences.
“Joining Google allows us to plug into the resources that only a company of
Google’s scale can offer, like a huge audience, access to world-class datacenters and a team of incredibly smart people,” Kraus added.
As result of being acquired by Google, existing JotSpot customers will no
longer be billed for service. According to Google’s FAQ, “although you will
still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won’t charge
you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.”
JotSpot will also no longer be accepting any new registrations as the wiki
platform moves over to Google’s architecture.
JotSpot has aimed to position itself as more than just a blank screen on which people jot down their ideas, but rather as a
collaboration platform.
To that end it has included calendaring,
spreadsheet, bug trackers and other applications on top of the wiki engine
that extend the JotSpot platform.
Earlier this year, JotSpot totally revamped its platform with an improved user interface and even more features.
JotSpot has also scored some high-profile wins, among them eBay which has a JotSpot-powered wiki.
Neither Kraus nor the Google FAQ on the acquisition provide any explicit
details as to what JotSpot wiki based service Google may offer in the
future.
“We can’t share all of our plans with you just yet,” Kraus blogged. “But
let’s just say the future looks bright.
