[PeterT]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=24862

Google Purchases Quickoffice for Mobile Editing of Microsoft Office Documents

This will allow Google to offer both Google Docs and Quickoffice for all a mobile user's document editing needs

Google can now add another acquisition to its list of recent purchases -- the search giant just picked up Quickoffice for an undisclosed amount.

Currently, there are no official mobile applications for Microsoft Office. Rather, Quickoffice has been the choice app for editing Office documents, and Google is apparently interested in tapping into this corner of the mobile market.

Google has its own editing app for documents called Google Docs, but this only works with Office files like .doc, .xls and .ppt on a desktop computer. The search company currently doesn't have a mobile editing program for Office documents, hence the recent Quickoffice acquisition.

Quickoffice is a mobile app that allows users to edit Microsoft Office documents on their devices like smartphones and tablets. This will allow Google to offer both Google Docs and Quickoffice for all a mobile Android user's document editing needs.

"We are ushering in a new chapter with Google," said Alan Maserak, co-founder and CEO of Quickoffice. "By combining the magic of Google's intuitive solutions with Quickoffice's powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow."

Google seems to be on a spending spree these days, since the search company just acquired Meebo earlier this week for a reported $100 million. The move aims to boost Google+ activity, which is Google's social network. Google launched Google+ in July 2011, and had millions of users join quickly within the first month. While the social network now has 170 million users, their activity is not significant -- especially compared to Facebook's 900 million active users. Meebo, a social networking company with over 100 million users in the U.S., will now help Google out with that problem.

http://blog.quickoffice.com/articles...by-google.html

Quickoffice has been acquired by Google

When we embarked on our mission to become the world leader in office productivity, we knew we were taking on a huge challenge. We worked very hard to build Quickoffice as a user friendly, seamless and yet powerful way to view, edit, sync and share documents anywhere, anytime. It’s been a very humbling experience to see this vision embraced by our users.

Now, we are ushering in a new chapter with Google. By combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice’s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.

The journey has been nothing short of incredible. Our vision has only become bigger, and our commitment stronger. We wish to sincerely thank our users and supporters over the years; you have our eternal gratitude and we invite you all to join us in embracing this next chapter.

Warm regards,

Alan Masarek
Co-founder and CEO