I was saddened to read yesterday that Etherpad will soon be no more. Etherpad is, for those who don't already know, a fantastic realtime collaboration tool that works great in a classroom situation.
The idea was beautifully simple; a teacher signs up to Etherpad, and sets up a page (or "pad") for use within the lesson / at home. It can be password protected if required - to prevent unauthorised access to it - but there is no requirement for pupils to log in to use it. I wrote a post earlier about how I had used it in a maths lesson in the ICT suite a while ago; and recently I was just starting to use it more and more in lessons and future planning.
I have spoken to many other teachers who also used Etherpad, and found it perfectly simple for classroom use, so imagine our suprise to read on the Etherpad blog that the company had been bought out by Google, and that it would very soon be closed down and be no more.
It brought back memories of the 1990's, and the (then) behemoth of the Internet, Microsoft. There was many a company who offered an alternative to a MS product - often cheaper of even free - that were bought out, and then shut down forcing users to buy expensive, bug ridden MS products.
This buy out puts Google into the same category. Are they really shutting down Etherpad so that they can concentrate development of an etherpad type plugin within their Wave system? If so, there are a couple of problems that rear their head straightaway with that plan.
- Wave is not an easy system to get to grips with. Etherpad was the online equivalent of "plug and play". Visit the page, enter your name, start typing. Simplicity in action.
- Wave requires all users to have an account, and be logged in to use. Etherpad required no login for pupils, and offered instant collaboration.
- Wave is a "social networking" system - so how long before schools are blocked from accessing it on their networks?
So, did Google buy Etherpad to make Wave better, as they claim, or did they buy it to silence the competition? If the answer is the second choice, how long before Wallwisher goes the same way, or many other free services that schools use on their websites (take a look at my schools credit page for the variety of free services we use to enhance the website)?
My final thought on this is to be wary Google, for Microsoft are still viewed as a company that stifled innovation through their aggressive buyouts. It wouldn't take much for the online world to start viewing another large, ambitious company in the same light if they took the same approach to competition.
