Monday, December 7, 2009

Google Buys AppJet, Makers of EtherPad

AppJet Inc, the creators of cool, web-based multiuser real-time text editor EtherPad (as previously reported), have been snapped up by Google, with their team joining the Google Wave team (some of the AppJet team actually already worked for Google before). “EtherPad is no longer accepting new customers” and “No new free public pads may be created”, the EtherPad blog states – and they’ve also added another post apparently after some people weren’t happy about the transition. They now say “We have begun planning how to open source the code to EtherPad and the underlying AppJet Web Framework” and that they “have re-enabled pad creation from the EtherPad home page.”

EtherPad was actually very well done, with much less usability issues overhead than Google Wave, so I’m not sure how well it is for end users that Google just acquires its competition in this field. Haruspex at the EtherPad blog comments, “This is the worst news ever. Google Wave is NOT an alternative to EtherPad. The clean design and, above all, the task specificity of EtherPad makes it vastly superior. I’ve been using Google Wave for over a month now and it just doesn’t compare to the months of wonderful service and growth from EtherPad. Boo.”

[Thanks Luka!]

Google Buys AppJet, Maker ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (6+3)

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