Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of Google (Alphabet) that created the Blogger service in 1999.
In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger.
In January 2001, Pyra asked Blogger users for donations to buy a new server.
[3] When the company's seed money dried up around the same time, the employees continued without pay for weeks or, in some cases, months; but this could not last, and eventually Williams faced a mass walk-out by everyone including co-founder Hourihan.
Williams ran the company virtually alone until he was able to secure an investment by Trellix after its founder Dan Bricklin became aware of Pyra's situation.