From several sources, comes news of ‘The Google’ acquiring the wiki-creation tool, JotSpot. Here’s what the company’s blog says. Ross Mayfield, the early-entrepreneur in the wiki-tools category (his company, SocialText, focuses on wiki-tools and solutions for enterprises) is my go-to observer of this category. Here’s what he has to say.

I am pleased about this news for a totally selfish reason. Whenever I tell people in the real world — most of whom are still confused about “this whole blogging thing” — that a big portion of SmallBusiness.com is a wiki, I typically get the dazed response, “A what?” About six months ago, I toned down the whole “wiki” terminology on the site (although you can still get there via a redirect from the URL SmallBusinessWiki.com) and decided to wait until the term “wiki” is understood by a broader audience. We still have a long time before a general audience (i.e., the small businesses that Jotspot is targeting) understand a wiki is something more than Wikipedia (a site that uses a wiki platform) that can be used in many other ways. Google getting into the wiki-hosting space will help crank up the awareness meter.

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