Google Goes Wiki
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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 11/8/2006
Google, still in a buying mood after paying $1.65 billion for online video site YouTube, recently announced it had acquired JotSpot, a three-year-old company that supplies tools to create wiki applications like spreadsheets, calendars, and online photo albums.
The most famous wiki—collaborative Web pages that allow users to modify entries—is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that turns readers into the writers, letting nearly anyone create a record, or make and suggest changes to one that already exists.
Libraries and schools have adopted wiki formatting for many of their former Web sites, allowing students to access homework assignments, letting schools send updates to parents, and making it easy for classes to collaborate.
The cofounders of JotSpot, Joe Strauss and Graham Spencer are the former cofounders of Internet search engine Excite, which was acquired in 1999 by ISP @Home Network for a reported $7.2 billion. The two launched the Palo Alto-based JotSpot after Spencer put their ideas for a new start-up on a wiki, and they both fell in love with the format, wrote Kraus on a Google blog announcing the JotSpot acquisition on October 31.
Neither JotSpot's Strauss and Spencer nor Google would release details of the deal. But Strauss did indicate that they would suspend any new registrations for the service until they could merge JotSpot's architecture with Google's. One upside? By joining the Google world, JotSpot's services will now be free, according to its Web site, www.jot.com.
