Whoa, didn't see this coming--but in hindsight, maybe I should have. BitTorrent, the company behind the peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol of the same name, has purchased uTorrent (properly µTorrent, but I'm too lazy to type the mu), one of the very best BitTorrent clients for Windows. uTorrent is known for being full-featured but having a tiny executable size and memory footprint. In their announcement BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen and uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus say that BitTorrent "recognized the merits of µTorrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community" and that "Bringing together µTorrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client." The announcement says that at first little will change for the uTorrent community, with the web site and forums remaining unchanged, but behind the scenes they "will continue to develop µTorrent and will be using the codebase in other applications, especially ones where a fast, lightweight implementation is more suitable, such as embedded systems on TVs, cell phones, and other non-PC platforms."

I'm hugely loyal to uTorrent and I wish Strigeus and the community the best. I'm very interested to see new developments with Strigeus at BitTorrent. I wonder what this means for BitTorrent's existing not-very-featureful client.