NewsGator purchases NetNewsWire

NewsGator acquires NetNewsWire

NewsGator Technologies has a new page on their site about the acquisition of NetNewsWire. Brent Simmons, the creator of NetNewsWire, will be joining the NewsGator team as a product architect according to a release on the NewsGator site. Om Malik scooped the news last night.

The phrasing of the announcement is around NetNewsWire only. I presume NewsGator has acquired all of Ranchero software, including products such as editing software MarsEdit, and not just NetNewsWire.

NewsGator Technologies now produces software in C#, ASP.net, Delphi, and Objective C. Lack of a unified codebase and the company’s reliance on one engineer per product seems to be a weak point even with their much-touted APIs.

NewsGator is now able to cover the entire feed aggregation landscape with its suite of products. NewsGator for Outlook covers the mail client integration, FeedDemon is the stand-alone option on the Windows desktop, NetNewsWire is the stand-alone client on the Macintosh, and NewsGator Online is the online option tying all of the properties together. NewsGator is still missing a recommended Linux or open source feed aggregation product or even a product with source committed by the NewsGator team.

Note the generic business user on the NewsGator NetNewsWire page is not even using a Mac!

Update: Greg Reinacker, CTO and founder of NewsGator, writes more about the acquisition on his blog. Greg mentioned there was a press briefing to announce the deal yesterday, yet I know that NewsGator remained quiet when questioned by bloggers.

Update 2: Brent posted a personal perspective on his weblog. He sees the acquisition as a way to gain many features his users were asking for, a support staff, and gives Brent more time to work on new features and bugs.

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