Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

(

Alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

) that created the

Blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

service in 1999. Google acquired Pyra Labs in 2003.

History

Pyra was co-founded by Evan Williams and

Meg Hourihan Meg Hourihan is the co-founder of Pyra Labs, the company that launched the Blogger personal blogging software that was acquired by Google. Career Hourihan graduated from Tufts University in 1994. In 1999, she and Evan Williams co-founded Pyr ...

. 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 Paul Bausch 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. Initially, Blogger was completely free of charge and there was no

revenue model A revenue model is a framework for generating financial income. There can be a variety of ways for revenue generation such as the production model, manufacturing model, as well as the construction model. A revenue model identifies which revenue sou ...

. In January 2001, Pyra asked Blogger users for donations to buy a new server. When the company's

seed money Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' suggest ...

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 VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, ...

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

Blogspot Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 that enables its users to write blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be acc ...

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

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

. On February 17, 2003, Pyra was acquired by

for an undisclosed sum.

References

{{Reflist

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