Google acquires EtherPad maker for Google Wave team

AppJet, a company that has been offering an online real-time collaboration tool called EtherPad, has been acquired by Google and will become part of the Google Wave team, according to a post on its blog today.

That makes sense. Real-time collaboration is gearing up to be one of the business buzz phrases for next year and Google - which continues to reach out to potential enterprise customers with its Google Apps offerings and "Go Google" campaign - wants to make sure it has a competitive offering when Wave goes mainstream.

It's hard to judge Wave right now, mostly because invitations to use it are limited and - at least in my situation - the people I might normally collaborate with on a project aren't on Wave. But, I also recognize, just by messing around with it during some free time, the potential that it holds. I don't know much about EtherPad and have never used it, but just based on some research of what it offers, it seems that it would integrate well into Wave and build up the tools for a real-time, online virtual meetings and document sharing.

The AppJet post didn't go into much detail on the deal itself and I couldn't locate a post in Google's blog network to offer more information. However, the AppJet post does contain some important information for existing EtherPad customers about what will happen to their accounts and data.

Also see: Meet Google Wave: a new way to to communicate and collaborate.