Google Buys DocVerse For Reported $25 Million
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Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has made its tenth acquisition in eight months, buying up DocVerse, a startup that lets users collaborate on Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Office documents online. The WSJ puts the purchase price at $25 million.
SEE ALSO: Microsoft Targets Google With Free Version Of Office
DocVerse’s plug-in adds features standard to Google’s own Docs to Office—like real-time editing and online saving. Google has suspended “new sign-ups until we’re ready to share what’s next.” That potentially could include new features to let Office users collaborate via Google Docs; Google says it wants to make it “easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.”
By acquiring the startup, Google also adds major talent to its Google Docs team; DocVerse co-founder Shan Sinha drove product strategy for Microsoft’s SharePoint and SQL Server and co-founder Alex DeNeui drove SQL Server’s web strategy.
The deal comes as Microsoft is set to release a free, web-based version of Office this Spring, which Microsoft has said will be particularly useful for online collaboration and will therefore likely make the DocVerse plug-in unnecessary.
This is Google’s tenth acquisition since August (and eighth since September, when CEO Eric Schmidt declared that the company was ready to start making about one purchase a month).
Posted In: Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions, Companies, Google, docverse
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