| Company name | Pyra Labs |
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| Company slogan | |
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| Owner | Google |
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| Company logo | |
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| Company type | Subsidiary |
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| Foundation | January 1999 |
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| Location city | San Francisco, CA |
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| Location country | U.S. |
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| Products | Blogger |
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| Homepage | Official site |
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| Url | www.pyra.com |
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| Launch date | |
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| Current status | active |
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Pyra Labs is the company that coined the word
Blog, creating the service
Blogger.
The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. 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 and there was no revenue model. When the company's seed money dried up, 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 became aware of Pyra's situation. Eventually advertising-supported Blogspot 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 of Brazil.
In 2003, Google acquired Pyra. At the time of the acquisition Evan Williams, Jason Shellen, Steve Jenson, Jason Sutter, Jason Goldman and Rudy Winnacker were at the company.
In 2004, Williams left Google, later going on to form Obvious Corp.
In 2006, Jason Goldman also left Google.
Hourihan was associated with Kinja and some other sites.
External links
Official site
Blogger's History Reimagined
How the Blogger Deal Happened
Category:Google acquisitions
Category:Google
Category:Google acquisitions
Category:1999 establishments
