Google To Acquire DocVerse; Office War Heats Up

TechCrunch, by Michael Arrington on December 19, 2009

Docverse is something in between Google Docs and Microsoft Office
(screenshot docverse.com)

Google, which is currently on one heck of a spending spree, is closing an acquisition of San Francisco based DocVerse , a service that lets users collaborate around Microsoft Office documents, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. The purchase price is supposed to be around $25 million.

Docverse lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. Appjet, another recent Google Acquisition, has a related product called EtherPad, although that team is reported to be working with Google Wave and the EtherPad source code has been released to the community.

DocVerse is a product Google is likely to keep. The company was founded by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui. Sinha drove product strategy for SharePoint and SQL Server, $1.6B and $3.0B products, respectively. DeNui ran Microsoft SQL Server’s web strategy.

With DocVerse Google will have a direct software connection to Microsoft Office, allowing users to collaborate real time on documents. Microsoft is also moving in this direction with Office 10. In effect, Microsoft is countering Google Docs with the new Office. And Google is countering that move with the acquisition of DocVerse. For more on this fight, see Imitation Isn’t Always Flattery: Microsoft Previews Google Apps Killer To Beta Testers.

DocVerse has raised just $1.3 million , in 2008, from Baseline Ventures , Harrison Metal Capital and Naval Ravikant .

The deal has not yet been finalized, says our source, but is past the term sheet stage.