Xmarks Lives!

When the news broke that Xmarks, my favorite Web browser bookmark service and utility, was going under, I was really ticked off. It turned out I wasn't the only one. So the company asked people would they be willing to pledge that if they made Xmarks into a pay service that they'd sign up for it .

The people, about thirty-thousand, have spoken, and it looks like that's convinced another company to buy Xmarks and keep the service going. Hurray!

In a blog posting by Xmarks' CEO James Joaquin, he wrote, "Thank you Xmarks users. You told the world it was simply unacceptable for our service to shut down and it worked. Thanks to your passion, Xmarks now has multiple offers from companies ready and willing to take over the service and keep making browser sync better and better!"

It's not a sure thing yet. Joaquin continued, "This is not a signed, sealed done deal yet. But with multiple offers on the table we're pretty confident that Xmarks will continue on with no service interruption."

I'm really happy about this and I have reason to hope now that Xmarks will continue. Sure there are lots of other bookmark synchronization tools out there, and many of them are now bundled in with Web browsers. But, nothing, nothing else can be used across multiple browsers and operating systems. Firefox on Linux, Internet Explorer on Windows, Safari on Mac OS X, Chrome on whatever, it all just works and it all works together. Only Opera, of the major Web browsers, isn't covered.

Perhaps, who knows, the new owner will extend Xmarks to Opera as well. At this point, as Joaquin concluded, "We don't know for certain how 'Xmarks Premium' will play out, but early indications are that some basic Xmarks features will remain free with more advanced features reserved for Premium users."

Whether I have to pay for it or not, I'm just really pleased that it looks like I'll be able to continue to use Xmarks.