Internet search provider Google has bought Prya Labs, a company that created some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs and helping to make the online journals more popular. Pyra Labs was founded in 1999 and has spurred the growth of blogs by distributing free software for journal creation and updating. The Mountain View, California-based company struck a deal late last week to acquire San Francisco-based Pyra Labs and its Web site, Blogger.com. Financial terms were not disclosed and Google will not discuss for a few more weeks its plans for incorporating blogging on the search site, but speculation has included Google posting small ads corresponding to the themes of specific Weblogs that use Blogger software. As news of the deal spread, Pyra Labs founder Evan Williams posted a message on the Blogger site saying that the acquisition is a good thing for Blogger users and that it will provide much needed financial and technological support to Weblogs. According to Google, more than 1 million people currently use Blogger's Web publishing tools and Williams claims that about 200,000 of those users are running active Weblogs.

(http://www.blogger.com), (http://www.google.com)

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