Google just announced that it has acquired Quickoffice, a company best known for its mobile productivity suite for Android and iOS. Google plans to bring Quickoffice’s “powerful technology” to its own Apps product suite. Quickoffice allows its users to create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on their mobile devices. The company says its software is currently installed on over 300 million devices in more than 180 countries.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed by either Google or Quickoffice. This is Google’s second major acquisition this week. Just yesterday, the company acquired the popular chat service Meebo for around $100 million.
Quickoffice CEO and co-founder Alan Masarek notes that he hopes that “by combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice’s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.”
Given Quickoffice’s focus on building native apps for mobile devices, chances are that Google will use this acquisition to launch more of its own native mobile productivity apps as well. Google’s announcement also stresses Quickoffice’s capability to provide “seamless interoperability with popular file formats,” something Google Docs/Drive occasionally still struggles with.
Google says that it’s looking forward to supporting Quickoffice’s current users “while we work on an even more seamless, intuitive and integrated experience.” Quickoffice has a large number of volume customers in the enterprise world, so chances are that Google will at least continue to offer some of Quickoffice’s more enterprise-focused services for the foreseeable future.
Besides its free apps, Quickoffice also offers a number of paid apps for consumers. Google often makes these available for free after an acquisition like this, but so far, there has been no indication that it plans to do this with Quickoffice’s apps.
In total, Quickoffice raised $28.5 million since it was founded all the way back in 1997. The company raised its Series A round in 2005 with participation from Mayfield Fund, Advantage Capital Partners and Shepherd Ventures. These funds also participated in Quickoffice’s subsequent funding rounds.
Below is the full announcement from Google:
We’re happy to announce that we have acquired Quickoffice, a leader in office productivity solutions.
Today, consumers, businesses and schools use Google Apps to get stuff done from anywhere, with anyone and on any device. 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.
Quickoffice has a strong base of users, and we look forward to supporting them while we work on an even more seamless, intuitive and integrated experience.
We’re excited to welcome the Quickoffice team and their users to Google.
