SubscribeGoogle delivered the latest salvo in its battle to wrest control from Microsoft over office productivity with its purchase of DocVerse, a Microsoft Office collaboration startup. The Wall Street Journal reported the purchase price was $25 million.
DocVerse was founded in 2007 by former Microsoft executives Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui. The first product is a plug-in for Microsoft Office that allows users of the desktop software to collaborate on Office documents.
“DocVerse offers the first-ever product to truly enable real-time sharing and editing of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. Its key advantage is that it does not require you to learn a new way to work by seamlessly plugging into Microsoft Office,” the company says on its web site.
Announcing the purchase on a company blog, Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager for the Google Apps team, praised DocVerse as a “small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they’ve enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.”
Beating Microsoft
“Google Apps have been about collaboration, but this will make it easier for people who work within Microsoft Outlook and Office to adopt Google Docs,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research.
In their blog announcement, Sinha and DeNeui said they started the company at a time when it was becoming clear that a new paradigm for productivity apps was emerging. “The world started moving toward easy-to-use web applications, like Google Docs & Apps, offering a new way to work with all kinds of benefits,” they said. “However, for the many people who use desktop software, like Microsoft Office, transitioning to the cloud was a challenge.”
Microsoft’s strategy has been Windows Live Workspace — a way…
Via NewsFactor
Yacine.org: Google Challenges MS Office with DocVerse Purchase http://bit.ly/cH3Rtn
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