Google's Quickoffice makes a quiet exit

When Google bought Quickoffice in 2012, it was a challenge to Microsoft — lord supreme of work productivity software. Now the Internet behemoth is quietly killing Quickoffice after building up Drive with extra editing functions.

Google noted in a blog post last Wednesday that it will be pulling Quickoffice apps from Google Play and the App Store in the coming weeks. Existing customers can continue using the app, but Google will not be updating the software.

Quickoffice was a promising mobile app company in 2009 when it released its office suite for iPhone — beating Microsoft to the punch. When Google acquired the company, it made Quickoffice compatible with Drive, Google’s cloud storage offering. Users could then not only write and edit on the go but could also use the app to convert Microsoft Word docs to Drive.

Now it seems to be folding the entire office line into Drive. In April the company released standalone app versions of Docs and Sheets, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Quickoffice is getting killed. Also, just last week Google announced new Drive features like the ability to natively edit Microsoft docs — which Quickoffice used to do — and Drive for Work, a $10 per month service that provides unlimited storage and heightened security. With these added features in Google Drive, Quickoffice was just a duplication of efforts.

The death of Quickoffice appears to be part of a little spring cleaning project at Google. This morning the company also killed its social network Orkut. While time has run out for Orkut, Quickoffice is still available in the App Store as of this writing.