by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
Search engine Google has added Jotspot to its list of 2006 acquisitions. The wiki application, now owned by Google, was co-founded by Joe Kraus the original president of Excite.Andrew Girdwood
A wiki is a website grown by a community of users. Wikis are a collaborative effort where anyone can create, edit or delete any other page. Jotspot goes an extra mile and offers extra features and plug ins. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, is perhaps the most famous wiki but Google's acquisition of the less well known Jotspot is inline with the search engine's usual buying habits. The YouTube deal was unusual; Google tends to buy smaller companies with an interesting idea and talented people. Yahoo has traditionally been the search engine to swoop on more established players (like Flickr or del.icio.us).
A rundown of what Jotspot offers, in addition to the pedigree of the staff, makes it clear why Google snapped up the wiki company.
- Microsoft Word style "What You See Is What You Get" editing
- Add-on applications
- Advanced Search
- Email integration
Jotspot offers up an easy way to manage email lists - a functionality which can be tied to Gmail (or Google Mail as it must be called in the UK), Personal To-Do Lists - a tie in with Google Desktop, Jotspot Spreadsheets - which can now become Google Spreadsheets, a Group Calendar - which can become Google Calendar, a Blog App which could blend with Google's Blogger and a Photo Gallery service ready to be integrated with Google's Picasa and Picasa Web Albums.
In addition to being a hub which Google could hang products from, Jotspot also offers Google a way into new areas - forums, project management software and even a knowledge base.
Writing in Google's Blog Joe Kraus of Jotspot commented; "As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention. We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online."
Salar Kamangar, VP of Product Management at Google, followed with a blog comment of his own; "After all, information created by a single user becomes exponentially more valuable when it's shared and combined with information from other people or places. We've been tackling this step by step for awhile now, including enabling people to move their calendars, photos and documents onto the web -- unlocking them from one PC or one piece of paper to open up a wide range of possibilities for working, planning, socializing, organizing, and so on."
Salar asked Google's users to stay tuned for more information. For now, however, Jotspot has closed its doors to new users while it begins the process of integrating with Google.
