WordPress.com owner Automattic snaps up grammar checker Harper

WordPress.com owner Automattic has added another company to its portfolio of online content creation tools and services with its acquisition of Grammarly competitor, Harper. Although it’s competing in the same space as the popular grammar checker used by many online writers, Harper’s tool is aimed at developers, open source, and works to maintain privacy by processing its checks locally on your device, the company says.

The service, named after novelist Harper Lee, is currently available as a language server through WebAssembly, but Automattic says the plan, post-acquisition, is to integrate its capabilities across the web hosting platform WordPress.com, e-commerce platform WooCommerce, WordPress plugin Jetpack, and others.

Automattic also claims that Harper offers its grammar and language suggestions under 20 milliseconds, which is less than 1% of the time it takes “a certain popular online grammar tool,” the company notes in an announcement, a likely reference to Grammarly.

Deal terms were not disclosed but Harper’s founder will be joining Automattic’s team where he will work to integrate the service across Automattic’s products.

The acquisition comes at a time when there’s been a lot of upheaval in the WordPress community over Automattic’s legal battle with WordPress hosting provider WP Engine. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has accused the provider of profiting off the open source WordPress project without contributing back a sufficient amount of code or working hours. In addition, he says WP Engine’s use of the “WP” brand confuses consumers and is asking the company to pay a portion of its revenue to license the WordPress trademark. The rift led 159 Automattic employees to depart the company in October, and the company later floated other severance package plans to anyone else who wanted to quit.