Google acquire Quickoffice to battle Microsoft

Boosting their mobile portfolio, Google just announced it will acquire Quickoffice, a leading app for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents.

While some reports say this move indicates Google has given up on using HTML-only for rich apps, the report in InfoWorld has an update with a Google spokesperson strongly claiming otherwise. That said, Google has promised quality mobile document editing apps for years, but can't match those of Quickoffice.

Regarded as the only serious business editing tool for Android, Quickoffice also matches or beats Apple's iWork in many areas. Google hasn't confirmed if they will pull their iOS versions of Quickoffice apps to push their Android platform, but some Google products for iOS lack the features and performance of their Android versions.

Nice to know

As a user of QuickOffice Pro and Google Drive, this is really good news.
Alison Hinchman on mashable.com

So Google’s Quickoffice makes Office format the web-based word processing standard. Doesn't sound like much of a battle to me. More of a capitulation.
Dave W on wired.com

Between Google’s apps and OpenOffice, my needs have been met pretty well up until now, except for mobile apps. Can’t wait to share this with my clients!
Mary McNamara on mashable.com

Options

your comments that DataViz Documents To Go has "all but disappeared" over the last 18 months is ridiculous: it's not only still available, but it had an update in the Google Play store as recently as April 30th, 2012.
jeffrey Tschiltsch on inforworld.com

i hope they don’t stray from dropbox integration.
Sarasti on mashable.com

This Google gambit is intended to force M$ hand and port Office to Android.
jburt56 on wired.com

Dissing Google

Google is NOT a software company. They aren't very good at software at all. They bought Android and now they've had to buy an apps company.
Major Plonquer on inforworld.com

Looking forwards to having a decent piece of software spammed and plastered with ad's, tracking widgets and other such junk. Way to go Google.
Trooper1 on wired.com

I dearly hope to never edit a document or spreadsheet on a phone.
1DaveN on inforworld.com

Quickoffice users: thumbs up or thumbs down to this new?

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