Google buys Pyra Labs, the company that brings you Blogger

Weblogs are going Googling.

Google, which runs the Web’s premier search site, has purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that created some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs, the increasingly popular personal and opinion journals.

The buyout is a huge boost to an enormously diverse genre of online publishing that has begun to change the equations of online news and information. Weblogs are frequently updated, with items appearing in reverse chronological order (the most recent postings appear first). Typically they include links to other pages on the Internet, and the topics range from technology to politics to just about anything you can name. Many weblogs invite feedback through discussion postings, and weblogs often point to other weblogs in an ecosystem of news, opinions and ideas.

“I couldn’t be more excited about this,” said Evan Williams, founder of Pyra, a company that has had its share of struggles. He wouldn’t discuss terms of the deal, which he said was signed on Thursday, when we spoke Saturday. But he did say it gives Pyra the “resources to build on the vision I’ve been working on for years.”

Part of that vision, shared by other blogging pioneers, has been to help democratize the creation and flow of news in a world where giant companies control so much of what most people see, hear and read. Weblogs are also becoming a valuable communication tool for groups of people, and have begun to infiltrate the corporate, university and government spheres.

Just three and a half years old, Pyra’s Blogger software has 1.1 million registered users, Williams said. He estimated that about 200,000 of them are actively running weblogs. Pyra charges for some higher-capability services not available in the base configuration, but most of its registered users don’t pay.

Google is known best for its search capabilities, but the Pyra buyout isn’t the company’s first foray into creating or buying Internet content. Two years ago Google bought Deja.com, a company that had collected and continued to update Usenet “newsgroups,” Internet discussion forums. More recently, it created Google News, a site that gauges the collective thoughts of more than 4,000 news sites on the Net.

But now Google will surge to the forefront of what David Krane, the company’s director of corporate communications, called “a global self-publishing phenomenon that connects Internet users with dynamic, diverse points of view while also enabling comment and participation.”

“We’re thrilled about the many synergies and future opportunities between our two companies,” he said in a statement on Saturday. He didn’t elaborate further on what those synergies and opportunities might be, but said more details would emerge soon. Users of the Blogger software and hosting service won’t see any immediate changes, he added.

For Williams and his five co-workers, now Google employees, the immediate impact will be to put their blog-hosting service, called Blog*Spot, on the vast network of server computers Google operates. This will make the service more reliable and robust.

This is great, really. It give Blogger a more solid foundation (not that they didn’t have one before) financially and hardware wise and helps promote the service even more. Throw on top of that the fact that Google seems to be one of the decent, non-corporate internet businesses still out there, and you’ve got a good deal. Congrats to Evan and the Pyra folks.

Man Wraps Entire House In Plastic After Terror Warning

Warnings from the Department of Homeland Security to get duct tape and plastic prompted a Connecticut man to wrap his entire house in plastic, according to a Local 6 News report.

Paul West said that he’d rather be safe than sorry.

So he bought hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting, batten boards, stapleguns, and ladders, to seal up his Winsted home.

“I just have all this energy from tension and anxiety and I don’t know what to do with it,” West said.”Basically, I’m doing what the government says we should do. I may be doing it a little more energetically than some folks, but I’m trying to be pro-active rather than reactive.”

The materials for the project cost about $250.

“My wife’s not happy, but she puts up with it,” West said. “My kids think it’s a good thing to do.”

Okay, first over, YOU’RE IN FREAKIN’ CONNECTICUT!!!! What the hell are terrorists going to hit up there? Christ almighty, this country’s full of nutcases. Second of all, hell, the ONLY way you can keep out some chemicals or gasses in the event of an attack is to make the place air tight, so no air gets in OR out, and, well, that means you suffocate eventually, so good job! God, I’m embarrassed for him.

The terrorists have won, folks.

Thanks, Chewy.

February 16th, 2003 at 1:18 pm | Tags: Uncategorized