Google Session at Cloud Expo

Google Friday reportedly shelled out somewhere between $25 million and $30 million for DocVerse, the almost three-year-old start-up that was obviously born to go to Google. TechCrunch expected the deal to close in December.

DocVerse will let Google Apps users share, edit, collaborate on and save offline-created Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents in the cloud. It syncs the online and offline documents so all modifications are in parallel and allows users to make running comments.

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Google Apps needs such widgetry, although users sometimes complain of it being dicey, if it hopes to strike a more even balance between its two million business users and Microsoft's 500 million-600 million Office users.

However, Microsoft's own free Office Web Apps, promised for the first half, are due out soon and should take a lot of steam out of DocVerse. The company will be rolling out Office 2010 on May 12 and said the launch includes SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010.

Google has taken DocVerse's plug-in off the market and suspended monthly billings while it goes off and integrates its technology. Current DocVerse users can keep on using it.

DocVerse founders Shan Sinha, who used to run product strategy for SharePoint, and Alex DeNeui, who used to run SQL Server's web strategy, will be taking their small team of maybe 20 people to the GooglePlex.

According to the Dow Jones blog All Things Digital DocVerse raised just $1.3 million from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Naval Ravikant.