"AppJet is a team of highly-talented entrepreneurs with deep expertise in real-time web collaboration. Google and AppJet have a shared vision of how web collaboration can benefit users, and we're excited to have the AppJet team contribute to the success of Google Wave," a Google spokesman said via e-mail on Friday.

The AppJet team will join the group developing Wave, an ambitious hosted collaboration application Google unveiled in May and that is still in limited availability by invitation only.

Wave boldly consolidates e-mail, instant messaging and document sharing, and is considered a potential game-changer both in the consumer online services market and in the enterprise collaboration space.

EtherPad, described by AppJet as a "Web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time," will keep operating until the end of March 2010, at which point all existing hosted accounts will be deleted, AppJet on Friday in its official blog.

Existing users are already complaining about these plans in comments to the AppJet blog posting. "This is the worst news ever. Google Wave is NOT an alternative to EtherPad. The clean design and, above all, the task specificity of EtherPad makes it vastly superior. I've been using Google Wave for over a month now and it just doesn't compare to the months of wonderful service and growth from EtherPad. Boo," wrote one disenchanted EtherPad user.