By Jeremy C. Owens, San Jose Mercury News –
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Google Inc. continued to bolster its product line with acquisitions Tuesday, announcing the purchase of mobile office software company Quickoffice Inc. for an undisclosed price.
Quickoffice offers a similar service to Google Docs and its related apps, with services that mirror the eponymous Microsoft Office catalog. While Google Docs is available on mobile devices and personal computers, Quickoffice focused solely on mobile devices such as Apple’s iPad and smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. The app has been installed on more than 300,000 devices, Quickoffice says.
“Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats, and we’ll be working on bringing their powerful technology to our Apps product suite,” Google Engineering Director Alan Warren wrote in a blog post announcing the deal.
Quickoffice — based in Plano, Texas — will become part of the Google Apps team, though neither company announced if employees would be moved to the search giant’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters or maintain their home office.
“By combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice’s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow,” Quickoffice co-founder and CEO Alan Masarek wrote in his blog post on the deal.
Quickoffice is the second acquisition Google has announced in two days, following Monday’s agreement to purchase Mountain View-based social-networking service Meebo to add to its Google+ team.
Google has acquired at least 140 companies since the beginning of 2010, according to regulatory documents, spending $16 billion to bring in talent and technology to boost its offerings. The biggest deal was the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, which was completed last month.
