Google has acquired AppJet, the makers of EtherPad. EtherPad is a “realtime collaborative text editing” service.

Google originally planned to just close EtherPad’s doors but after AppJet heared feedback from their users they have decided to continue running EtherPad until the source code could be released.

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. We do realize (as does the Google Wave team) that Wave doesn’t yet have all the functionality you rely on, and isn’t yet as mature as EtherPad. We are confident that in the long term you will be really happy with Google Wave, though. That’s why we decided to join them!

I had never heard of EtherPad before this announcement but it seems like the perfect fit for Google Wave. I still don’t plan on using Wave but I hope that this acquisition will bring a great product to those who do use it.

Update 12/20/09: EtherPad is now open source, visit the Google Code page for more information.