It is very interesting to watch the web 2.0 services and websites being acquired by larger corporate players. Google has acquired both Writely (now Google documents and spreadsheets, integrating both Google Spreadsheets and Writely functionality) and YouTube in the past year– and now Google is into the Wiki world with its acquisition of JotSpot.
Jot.com was one of the first wikis I ever used, back in the Spring of 2005 when our educational law class research group used it to create a “Student Cell Phone Use and Other Technology Concerns for Schools” wiki. My favorite free wiki sites are now PBwiki (great because its tagging markup is so simple, and you can have a private wiki for free) and WikiSpaces (nice because of its better WYSIWYG formatting options.) It will be interesting to see how the feature set of Jot.com changes (and hopefully improves even more) now that Google has acquired them.
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3 responses to “Google acquires Jotspot”
Geez… it’s getting hard to keep up with the shopping spree these guys are on. What do you think is going to be their next target? I’ve got my money on Netvibes.
I have been writing on the topic of corporate wikis recently (http://wikibc.blogspot.com) and this come as a confirmation of the potential of these applications.
Some of them already offer powerful solutions in terms of coordination and communication within organizations and with the entry of Google JotSpot is likely to improve its level of service – for free.
I look forward to a Google-based wiki with great interest. If you want to find more on the topic, just give a quick glance to my blog.