AppJet, the company and creators of EtherPad, an online collaborative word processor, has just been bought by Google Wave. As announced on the EtherPad blog, the EtherPad team will continue it’s work, but with Google Wave.
A Google spokesperson says in an email:
AppJet is a team of highly-talented entrepreneurs with deep expertise in real-time web collaboration. Google and AppJet have a shared vision of how web collaboration can benefit users, and we’re excited to have the AppJet team contribute to the success of Google Wave.
It’s not a surprise that Google Wave would choose to team up with AppJet. Their product EtherPad has proven to be a very successful web-based, online collaboration tool. So much so that they’ve been able to charge their users $8 per month.
However, EtherPad customers aren’t so happy about this acquisition. In fact, with a quick glance over the comments at the EtherPad blog, the majority of customers are pretty pissed about this new partnership.
One EtherPad user writes:
C’mon Google, I am a big supporter but at least give us till the end of the year to publish new pads … this is way to abrupt and sudden, I was just showing people yesterday how easy and great this product was!!
Because Google Wave has built a reputation for being hard to understand, I think current EtherPad users are afraid the easy functionality that set apart EtherPad from other competitors will be lost in Google Wave.
It is a little scary to think that Google bought out one of it’s only large competitors. However, hopefully some of the beauty and functionality of EtherPad will be brought into Google Wave for a better product. We all know Google Wave is pretty rough around the edges at the present moment.
How do you feel about Google’s acquisition of AppJet?
A smart move on Google’s part… although, we’ll continue to see how the EtherPad community takes the acquisition.
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