Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer

After Google ‘s $10 million Friday acquisition of Applejet, Aaron Iba, AppJet’s CEO has announced that their service would reopen to the public as opensource. Applejet is the developer of EtherPad , a document collaboration service like Google Docs with some enhanced features notably one that displays document updates to all users in real time. With the MIT-led EtherPad team working side by side with the Google Wave development group, Wave is better poised to become a much improved office suite version of Google docs.

Etherpad’s users who were not looking forward to the anticipated shutting down of their service on 31 March as was initially announced are relieved to know that that they will be able to continue usage until the code is released.

AppJet has given users a clear roadmap to the shutdown. The service is now closed to new users and existing Professional users will not be charged for the remainder of Etherpad’s life. AppJet has also given clear instructions on exporting docs from Etherpad so that they’re not lost.

On Saturday, Iba posted an update to the AppJet blog:

Many of you were not super thrilled with the transition plan we announced in our last blog post, which I guess is really quite flattering. We have worked with Google and the Google Wave team to make the following changes to the plan, which I think you will appreciate:

* We have re-enabled pad creation from the EtherPad home page.
* We have begun planning how to open source the code to EtherPad and the underlying AppJet Web Framework. We will continue maintaining new pad creation from the EtherPad home page at least until we have open sourced the code, and work hard to make sure there will be no or minimal service disruption in the future.
* We are working with the Google Wave team to get all EtherPad users a chance to try out the Google Wave preview within the next couple of weeks..