The Weekly Squeak

Instantiations, the company who took over IBM’s Visual Age for Smalltalk business, have now had the Java part of their operation snapped up by Google, who were reportedly interested in Instantiation’s Java and Ajax team, especially their GWT Designer product, which is slated to become part of the Google Web Toolkit infrastructure.

In many cases in the past, innovative companies using Smalltalk have attracted the attentions of the big players, who have then bought them and dropped all Smalltalk development in favour of Java or other enterprise environments. In this case however, Instantiations’ Smalltalk business is being spun off, and will remain in business as a separate entity focusing on development and support of Smalltalk products including VA Smalltalk, as their new homepage makes clear.