Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced yesterday of coming up with a Quickoffice free for everyone. The new feature will make life easier for Android and iOS users as they will be able to access the Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, on the move and that too free of cost.
Google offering much more
The free version can be downloaded directly from Google Play and Apple’s App Store, however, user will require to sign in their Google Account. The package does not end here, if any user signs into their Google Account from any of the new apps by September 26th, the internet giant will award an extra 10 GB of storage on Google Drive absolutely free, for two years.
Apart from offering free app, Google also announced many new features including a new icon, .ZIP folders and view charts in Excel® and PowerPoint® files. “The new app works across devices, so you don’t have to worry about installing separate versions anymore when you go from using your phone to editing on your tablet,” said Google.
Google, Microsoft war now more intensified
In June 2012, Google acquired QuickOffice, which at that time only offered native apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Symbian. The move from Google of not offering Symbian users free apps makes sense, for the reason that is very well obvious. Since Windows Phone and BlackBerry are now not so dominating, in the future, we can surely expect more updates of Quickoffice for Android and iOS.
Last year, in December, Google discontinued free Google apps, that presently costs around $50 per user (premium apps), per year. Then two weeks after, Google came up with an exclusively free Quickoffice iPad for Apps customers. Then in April, the internet giant surprised Apps customers with a free version for Android and iPhone.
And now, Google has removed all barriers, offering Quickoffice free to all users. Offering free apps certainly do make Google Buisness Apps more attractive to organizations. Also, since now the app is available freely to all, the cold war between Google and Microsoft has reached an all new level.
Though, Microsoft did try to match Google’s free offering and came out with Office Mobile for iOS in June and for Android in July, but it majorly lacked an Office 365 subscription, which in the current scenario is very essential. However, with the latest move, Google has surely given a huge blow to Microsoft.
