Google buys Quickoffice

Google and Microsoft. Honestly, you two. Always with the fighting. Google has a search engine, Microsoft launches Bing. Microsoft has a pretty successful suite of Office software out there, Google launches Google Documents (which sort of morphs into Google Drive) to compete in office environments. Now Googs has acquired a company called Quickoffice, a company that build mobile applications for reading and editing Microsoft Office documents. Google has its own software for reading and editing Docs on mobile devices but it’s total barf and Google is likely hoping that Quickoffice can make something a lot better. That’s because enterprise clients, like everyone else, are going mobile with computers and Google needs Docs to be ready.

Wired indicates that this war is heating up:

“Google Apps is taking more business away from Microsoft than we expected, raising its stature as an enterprise provider,” read a recent report from research outfit Gartner. “Microsoft’s dominance on-premises prevails but, ultimately, it may face a serious threat to its Office franchise.”

Personally, I expect the pitched animosity between Google and Microsoft to get so hostile that the two companies just end up making out like on Mad Men.