Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

(

Alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

) that created the

Blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

service in 1999. Google acquired Pyra Labs in 2003.

History

Pyra was co-founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. The company's first product, also named "Pyra", was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. Their coder

Jack Dorsey Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur and programmer who is a co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Inc., as well as a co-founder and the CEO and chairperson of Block, Inc., the developer of the Squa ...

altered an ftp program to work on a webpage, enabling online users to upload to a webpage web-log. In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger. The service was made available to the public in August 1999. Much of this coding was done by Paul Bausch and

Matthew Haughey Matthew Haughey (born October 10, 1972) is an American programmer, web designer, and blogger best known as the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter, where he is known as ''mathowie''. Life and career Haughey grew up in Placentia, Califor ...

. Initially, Blogger was completely free of charge and there was no revenue model. In January 2001, Pyra asked Blogger users for donations to buy a new server. When the company's seed money dried up around the same time, the employees continued without pay for weeks or, in some cases, months; but this could not last, and eventually Williams faced a mass walk-out by everyone including co-founder Hourihan. Williams ran the company virtually alone until he was able to secure an investment by Trellix after its founder

Dan Bricklin Daniel Singer Bricklin (born July 16, 1951) is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and T ...

became aware of Pyra's situation. Eventually advertising-supported

Blogspot Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 which enables multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed th ...

and Blogger Pro emerged. In 2002, Blogger was completely re-written in order to license it to other companies, the first of which was

Globo.com Grupo Globo ( en, Globo Group), formerly known as Organizações Globo ( en, Globo Organization), is a Brazilian private mass media conglomerate based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Founded in 1925 by Irineu Marinho, it is the largest media group i ...

of Brazil. On 17th, February, 2003, Pyra was acquired by

References

{{Reflist , 2

External links

Official site

Blogger's History Reimagined

Defunct software companies of the United States Google acquisitions American companies established in 1999 Software companies established in 1999 Software companies disestablished in 2003 2003 mergers and acquisitions 1999 establishments in California