Google's Quickoffice Purchase Takes Aim At Windows 8

alphadogg writes "Google announced Tuesday it has acquired Quickoffice, whose software could bolster Google Apps on tablets and smartphones. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Google's second buyout in two days (yesterday it announced the acquisition of social/advertising company Meebo) gives the company more ammunition in its fight for the mobile office versus Microsoft, which is steaming ahead with Windows 8 and its Office apps. Quickoffice offers apps for Android and Apple iOS tablets and smartphones, but it's unclear what will become of the iOS ones under Google's domain."

Comments

Will Google opensource it?

[k(wi)r(kipedia)]

Since this is an app and not a backend, this seems like "logical" speculation. With a few notable exceptions, most of the downloadable Google software appears to be open source to some extent.

Apple's weakness is in the office suite

[Taco Cowboy]

On the Macs, Apple relies on Microsoft to provide the office suites

On the iPad / iPhone, Apples again relies on others to provide the office suites

Which means, unless Apple purchases a 3rd party which made office suite for iOS, it may have to settle with an office suite that is owned by Google

Re:Apple's weakness is in the office suite

[Calos]

iWork seems to be pretty decent for most things. I don't have much experience myself but I know others who use it regularly, except when needing something with the power of Excel.

Re:Apple's weakness is in the office suite

[k(wi)r(kipedia)]

Not to worry. If Apple feels really threatened, it has enough money to buy any other online or offline office suite manufacturer. Corel? Zoho? And don't count out Apple's own iWork, which is probably good enough for users that find QuickOffice and Google Docs good enough.

Re:Apple's weakness is in the office suite

[TheRaven64]

Apple provides iWork on iOS and OS X. Apple has a licensing deal with Microsoft that gives them access to the file formats for office, and can work moderately well with them. On OS X, for example, you can view PowerPoint presentations and Word documents in QuickView from the Finder.

Re:Apple's weakness is in the office suite

[ozmanjusri]

Why would they bother when Microsoft is doing so well at that themselves?

Re:Apple's weakness is in the office suite

[SteveFoerster]

It's just a sig, you know.

Completing another piece of the jigsaw

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing here, but we have to consider that Office Apps are required for a platform to be seriously considered by the enterprise. Microsoft have Office, Apple have iWork, and this gives Google QuickOffice. All three also have an online viewing/editing/storage option too.

What can we expect in the future then? Google will presumably make the software free at some point, bundled with their platforms. Tablet Androids would be first, and then at some point a port to Google's ChromeOS must surely happen to make these devices more attractive. However I wonder how easy it will be to take software optimised for mobile devices with small screens and translate it to a laptop or desktop environment.

Re:Completing another piece of the jigsaw

[lpp]

What I find interesting is how Microsoft still uses the Office suite to fend off threats to the real reason it is still entrenched in many back offices... Exchange.

I've personally seen many businesses try alternative office suites only to say that while they are more or less happy with the replacements for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and the like, they didn't feel they could drop Outlook because they rely so heavily on the collaborative features of Exchange.

These companies don't want to migrate to Google's cloud based offering because they want things kept on premises. And there isn't a compelling all-in-one alternative to Exchange that is as easily tied in with their existing systems (e.g. auto-login via Windows authentication). So because they keep Exchange, they keep Outlook. Because they keep Outlook, they keep Office. And so the wheel turns.

Re:Completing another piece of the jigsaw

[JasterBobaMereel]

My experience is that both Exchange and Outlook are both terrible, badly written and hard to maintain..... but work just that bit better than the alternatives, and users are familiar with it and it does everything they need (which seems to be different for each user...)

Re:FRIST POST!

[RubberMallet]

> make googel music better looking

Or.. accessible to places outside the US...

Google branded Androids

[GeLeTo]

Quickoffice will be one of the carrots to lure manifacturers to use the Google branded version of Android instead of rolling their own ( Amazon, Baidu Yi ). This is their primary incentive, not Windows 8.

Horrible

[imamac]

Quickoffice has some of the worst reviews for an office app on iOS. 1-2 stars. I would think Google could afford something a but better.

Re:Horrible

[witherstaff]

emacs? It's an office suite, email program, IDE, and even has a text editor.

Re:FRIST POST!

[OverkillTASF]

That's not Google's doing, it's the legal hoops put up by the music industry in each country. Blame them.