Google Acquires Wiki Service JotSpot
Google said on Tuesday it bought JotSpot, a Silicon Valley start-up that helped pioneer the market for Web-based business software like spreadsheets, in the latest move by the Web search leader into an area dominated by Microsoft.
In a statement on the Mountain View, California-based company's Web site, JotSpot Co-Founder and Chief Executive Joe Kraus said his company had agreed to the merger following a series of moves by Google to provide competing software.
Three-year-old JotSpot had developed a series of online productivity software programs that offer many of the functions of Microsoft Office programs like Microsoft Word or Excel spreadsheets. But instead of running on individual computers, JotSpot applications are delivered as Web-based services.
Following the lead of companies like JotSpot, Google entered the market earlier this year by acquiring the Writely word processor and introducing other Web-based applications such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Calendar.
"It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online," said Kraus, who previously was a co-founder of Excite, one of the Web's first search sites started in 1994.
JotSpot's programs run on collaborative wiki software, a flexible form of Web publishing for groups that allows any approved user to edit or change individual documents.
The 27-employee company, based a few miles from Google headquarters in Palo Alto, has temporarily shut down new user registrations while it moves its Web services and existing customer data onto Google's computer systems in Mountain View.
JotSpot has attracted 2,000 companies to use its software. It counts 30,000 paying customers and around 300,000 free users of its Web software tools. Kraus said his company would continue to support existing customers during the transition.
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