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 . Shia 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.
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