Google buys Etherpad

Yesterday the news came out that Google had acquired Etherpad, an online tool that allowed users to type in the same document in real-time. Making new Etherpad documents was immediately disabled, to the ire of myself and many others (note: as of Dec 5, it’s back).

It wasn’t that surprising. Google’s been buying up promising web applications for a while. After the launch of Google Wave last month, commenters criticized Wave and compared it to Etherpad, which is as simple to use as:

• Click on “new pad” at etherpad.com.
• IM or email the URL to collaborators.
• Start typing.

On the other hand, Wave’s three-column interface keeps only a fraction of the actual conversation on the screen, and scrolling through it is a pain. Having a discussion is intuitive on Etherpad, but Wave requires you to click on a tiny bar that fades in and out to indicate where you’re typing, and when you’re done typing, there’s a “Done” button and no hotkey to bypass it – so very 1998.

To its credit, my Etherpad conversations typically start instantaneously but go on for thousands of lines. The only conversation I’ve ever had on Wave consisted of half empty speech bubbles and half people saying how confused they were.

The purchase of Etherpad comes at a bit of a surprising time, since in the last two weeks since I discovered Etherpad, I’ve started using it for just about everything. Writing essays, group chat with friends, and project management for FSM and other groups. It’s started spreading virally just like GMail and YouTube did when they came out, thanks to students using it to collaborate on group projects and team conversations.

Google obviously made a smart choice in buying out this competitor, but this purchase also takes them closer to a routine of buying out competitors. Google is holding back on their own version of Etherpad, even though there is clearly a niche for it. Wave might be great as a transformative web technology, but if even techies and programmers prefer a simpler product. While Etherpad has become open source and anyone can set up their own server, the product has been killed off and the userbase scattered. Some say that Google has shipped another bloated product and is going down the path that Microsoft took. I certainly hope that’s not the case.