Just when you thought that Google had pretty much given up on cloud-based office productivity, it announces that it has purchased Quickoffice, a “leader” in office productivity solutions. I’m not sure I’d elevate Quickoffice to that status per se, but let’s face it: Their mobile apps are pretty decent and almost certainly offer better compatibility with Microsoft Office than does Google Docs/Drive. You have to think that’s the point here.
“Today, consumers, businesses and schools use Google Apps to get stuff done from anywhere, with anyone and on any device,” Google engineering director Alan Warren writes in a post to the Official Google Blog. “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.”
In his own blog post, Quickoffice co-founder and CEO Alan Masarek says that his company is ushering in a new chapter in its history by joining Google. “We worked very hard to build Quickoffice as a user friendly, seamless and yet powerful way to view, edit, sync and share documents anywhere, anytime,” he writes. “It’s been a very humbling experience to see this vision embraced by our users … By combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice’s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.”
Quickoffice Pro HD for iPad
Quickoffice currently offers a Quickoffice Pro app for iPhone or Android handsets for $14.99 and a Quickoffice Pro HD for the iPad or Android tablets for $19.99. I own the iOS versions of the apps, though I never actually use them. (Like many, I went through a short spate of trying to use the iPad for real work.) But with Google’s online services offering notably bad Microsoft Office document compatibility, that has to be the big win here for Google. Quickoffice seems to work pretty well in that in regard.