There is no doubt that the flagship product of Microsoft has been their Office suite. That’s the collection of software that carries popular names such as Word, Excel, and Power Point. The Microsoft Office suite has been, with the only exception being the Windows operating system, a major claim to fame for Microsoft. However, Google just acquired DocVerse which is a platform designed to bring Microsoft Office documents up to the cloud (or the web).
DocVerse was acquired by Google last week for an estimated $25 million. This now puts Google in control of what has been the primary dominant force in uploading MS Office documents to the web. And once the docs are on the web, in DocVerse, people can update data and share the documents with other easily.
This move makes me think that Google is about to beat Microsoft at their own game. With DocVerse now in the control of Google, it’s easy for Google to leverage their brand and marketing prowess to quickly dominate the online document market space.
Not to mention that Google already has a growing market share with their Google Apps suite. Google Apps is also an online version of the Office suite, only not quite as robust as the MS Office software that you use on your desktop.
Google has stopped allowing new sign ups at DocVerse until they’ve integrated DocVerse into their business model. However, existing DocVerse users can still use their documents.
It will be interesting to see what Google does with the new DocVerse acquisition. One thing’s for sure – Microsoft better be careful before Google beats them at their game!