In my email in-box this afteroon:
“We’re writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users.”
So Google has a wiki tool now (or soon will, as far as users are concerned). While there is something very disturbing about one giant gorilla consuming all of the little interesting things that move about him (see ), the multi-channel collaboration combined with content-based search and indexing is pretty compelling.
Also compelling is the fact that it is now FREE. Once the current pay-per contracts run out, no one else will be charged. JotSpot had a free version of their tool that was very limited, in terms of content and users. Free wiki hosting is a direct response to similar moves by wiki.com and Wikia, only without the integrated power of other tools.
Although JotSpot assures that the data is still secure under Google, this kind of acquisition does again bring up the disjointed nature of original use and acquired use. JotSpot charged for some services, and therefore collected credit card info … sensitive data that Google isn’t going to need and which the JotSpot clients never approved to be distributed. JotSpot is letting clients intervene (with an email to privacy@job.com) before that transfer takes place, but it puts the onus on the person not the institution. Google might have some uses of more mundane information, like names and email addresses, that weren’t considered by the JotSpot clients at the time it was submitted.
I’ll be trying out GoogleWiki, or whatever they call it if not JotSpot, when it shows up on the more Google products page.
