Giving its ambitious hosted collaboration application, Wave, a notable boost, Google Friday acquired AppJet - a small company whose EtherPad real-time workgroup collaboration service perfectly fits into the Google Wave schema.

Talking about the AppJet acquisition, a Google spokesman said in an e-mail: "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."

Confirming the deal, AppJet too said on Friday that its EtherPad team will carry on its work pertaining to real-time collaboration in conjunction with the team at the Google Wave - which was introduced in May and is still in limited availability, that too via invitation only.

Google Wave is a kind of hybrid that brings together instant messaging, e-mail, and wikis. In the opinion of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the application can be considered the future of collaboration, especially because of its intrinsically networked nature and its real-time view of the activities of the collaborating people.

Meanwhile, according to the AppJet official blog, EtherPad, which is essentially a Web-based word processor that enables users to work together in really real-time, will remain operational till the end of March next year; after which all the current hosted accounts will be obliterated.