Google makes a purchase to work with Microsoft Office

Google has announced the acquisition of DocVerse, a strategy aimed at Microsoft Office users.

After the purchase of Picnik, Google has now brought another small company into their stable. This time the acquisition is related to online office functions, through the purchase of DocVerse, with Google proclaiming this is the "future of productivity applications" in Cloud Computing mode.

Google has nevertheless addressed the fact that users are attached to traditional office applications. This purchase will be used to help make the transition towards Cloud Computing easier via interoperability with applications like Microsoft Office.

"With DocVerse, people will be able to start to experience certain advantages seen with collaborative work on the web while using traditional applications like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint", indicates Jonathan Rochelle, Manager of Google products.

The first step of integrating the DocVerse team into Google will be the "creation of a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps", explain the founders of the company based in San Francisco who previously worked for... Microsoft.

DocVerse offers a plug-in for Microsoft Office which integrates into Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It offers functions for collaborative work through the synchronisation of any document to the Internet. The documents can be read online (and worked on collectively) from any browser, without having to open an Office application.

Google recently reviewed their existing set up in terms of data loss prevention by explaining the currently implemented data replication system for their applications (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Agenda and Google Sites). All of the actions are replicated simultaneously in two data centres at the same time. This means that any data centre failure should have no effect on users.

Last week, Steve Ballmer, President of Microsoft, declared that "he was indifferent" to Cloud Computing. Cloud computing has nevertheless now been completely linked to all of the products developed by the software giant. The purchase of DocVerse by Google will surely have gotten Ballmer’s goat up.