

Google To Acquire DocVerse; Office War Heats Up - raghus
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/19/google-to-acquire-docverse-office-war-heats-up/

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qeorge
DocVerse looks like an awesome product, but I'm confused about how it fits
into Google's strategy with Docs. Its a plugin for MS Office, that actually
gives Office some of the better features of Google Docs (sharing, real-time
collaboration). I thought Docs was positioned as an Office replacement.

This bullet on the DocVerse homepage says it best: "Keep using Word,
PowerPoint and Excel"

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cgranade
If you have to have a Google login to get to DocVerse, and if they make
DocVerse-hosted Office documents available through Google Docs, then they've
made the barrier to entry into Docs a hell of a lot lower. Moreover, this
could work well with their other big project: Wave. There's currently no good
way to get things in and out of Wave, making it much less than ideal for
applications like what Pulse and SharePoint are targeting. Maybe DocVerse can
somehow help with that?

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qeorge
_"if they make DocVerse-hosted Office documents available through Google
Docs"_

I think that's the key there. If they can add the ability to edit Word docs
online with high fidelity that would be really compelling.

However, DocVerse does not currently have this capability, and neither does
Google Docs.

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sachinag
To be fair, this is essentially what Microsoft themselves have announced for
Live Office, their cloud version of Office.
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124749451107332731.html>

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zaidf
Microsoft is in a very tricky position. On one hand, if they decide to go
against Docs head to head online, they will be cannibalizing their own
moneymaking product(Office) for a free online version.

On the other hand, if they leave online version weak or even make it fee-
based, they will let Google own this space.

I didn't think online docs had much legs. But having gone this year in school
exclusively using Docs over Office, I think its got real benefits.

I used Docs to organize group study guides where as many has 40 people
contributed small portions to create a master study guide. Overwhelming
majority that signed up and participated received A's on the midterm and
final. Just through my study guide initiative, I probably got a hundred people
using Docs this semester. Best marketing ever!

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sahaj
1) buy company 2) use code and people for other projects 3) open source the
code 4) profit???

