This morning - 6:30 AM pacific - I talked to the CEO and co-founder of JotSpot, Joe Kraus. I think he hasn't had much time to sleep. You see, he just sold his company to Google , Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). In fact, he wrote about it on the Google blog.

Joe started his company about three years ago with a laser focus on developing a top-notch wiki product. Basically, a wiki allows for groups to collaborate on projects. In some cases, the projects can be enormous, such as with Wikipedia.

However, for the most part, wikis are still in the early stages, but with the Google deal, this should change quickly. Says Joe: "We wanted to bring wikis to the biggest audience possible."

Joe is an Internet veteran, having cofounded one of the early portals, Excite. He has taken his consumer knowledge and applied it to JotSpot; that is, the product is easy yet powerful.

It is no secret that Google is focusing much more on collaboration. There has been lots of evidence of this from things like Writely, Google Groups and the Google Spreadsheet.

I also think Google has ambitions for moving much more into the corporate space (but with a Web 2.0 approach.)

No doubt, in this deal, Google has validated the importance of wikis -- and other major companies, like Yahoo , Inc.(NASDAQ:YHOO) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will likely respond. In other words, startup wiki companies like Socialtext, Near-Time and others may be buyout bait.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Google goes wiki, wiki, wiki originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.